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I’VE MARRIED 
MARJORIE 


BY 


MARGARET WIDDEMER 

Author of “The Boardwalk,” “The Rose-Garden 
Husband,” “The Wishing-Ring Man,” 
^The Old Road to Paradise,” etc. 



NEW YORK 

HARCOURT, BRACE AND HOWE 
1920 





COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY 
THE CROWELL PUBLISHING COMPANY 

COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY 
HARCOURT, BRACE AND HOWE, INC. V 


©CI.A576051 ^ 



AUG 1 4 1920 '■ 


\ 

A 


/K A. ^ *1 / 


I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 



CHAPTER I 


The sun shone, that morning, and even from a 
city office window the Spring wind could be felt, 
sweet and keen and heady, making you feel that 
you wanted to be out in it, laughing, facing toward 
the exciting, happy things Spring was sure to be 
bringing you, if you only went a little way to meet 
them — just a little way! 

Marjorie Ellison, bending over a filing cabinet: 
in a small and solitary room, felt the wind, and 
gave her fluffy dark head an answering, wistful 
lift. It was a very exciting. Springy wind, and 
winds and weathers affected her too much for her 
own good. Therefore she gave the drawer she 
was working on an impatient little push which 
nearly shook the Casses down into the Cats — she 
had been hunting for a very important letter named 
Cattell, which had concealed itself viciously — ^and 
went to the window as if she was being pulled there. 

She set both supple little hands on the broad 


3 


4 rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 

stone sill, and looked downward into the city street 
as you would look into a well. The wind was blow- 
ing sticks and dust around in fairy rings, and a 
motor car or so ran up and down, and there were 
the usual number of the usual kind of people on 
the sidewalks; middle-aged people principally, for 
most of the younger inhabitants of New York are 
caged in offices at ten in the morning, imless they 
are whisking by in the motors. Mostly elderly ladies 
in handsome blue dresses, Marjorie noticed. She 
liked it, and drew a deep, happy breath of Spring 
air. Then suddenly over all the pleasure came a 
depressing black shadow. And yet what she had 
seen was something which made most people smile 
and feel a little happier; a couple of plump, gay 
young returned soldiers going down the street arm 
in arm, and laughing uproariously at nothing at all 
for the sheer pleasure of being at home. She turned 
away from the window feeling as if some one had 
taken a piece of happiness away from her, and 
snatched the nearest paper to read it, and take the 
taste of what she had seen out of her mouth. It 
was a last night^s paper with the back page full 
of “ symposium.^^ She read a couple of the letters, 


I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 5 

and dropped the paper and went back desperately 
to her filing cabinet. 

“ Cattell — Cattell ” she whispered to herself 

very fast, riffling over the leaves desperately. Then 
she reverted to the symposium and the soldiers. 

Oh, dear, everybody on that page was writing 
letters to know why they didn’t get married,” she 
said. ‘‘ I wish somebody would write letters telling 
why they did, or explain to those poor girls that 
say nobody wants to marry a refined girl that they’d 
better leave it alone! ” 

After that she hunted for the Cattell letter till 
she found it. Then she took it to her superior, 
in the next room. Then she returned to her work 
and rolled the paper up into a very small ball and 
dropped it into the big wastebasket, and pushed it 
down with a small, neat oxford-tied foot. Then 
she went to the window again restlessly, looked out 
with caution, as if there might be more soldiers 
crossing the street, and they might spring at her. 
But there were none; only a fat, elderly gentlemaii 
gesticulating for a taxi and looking so exactly like 
a Saturday Evening Post cover that he almost 
cheered her. Marjorie had a habit of picking up 


6 rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 

very small, amusing things and being amused by 
them. And then into the office bounced the one 
girl she hadn’t seen that day. 

Oh, Mrs. Ellison, congratulations ! I just got 
down, or I’d have been here before! ” she gasped, 
kissing Marjorie hard three times. Then she stood 
back and surveyed Marjorie tenderly until she 
wanted to pick the wad of paper out of the basket 
and throw it at her. “ Coming back to you! ” she 
said softly. “Oh, you must be thrilled!” She 
put her head on one side — she wore her hair in a 
shock of bobbed curls which Marjorie loathed any- 
way, and they flopped when she wished to be em- 
phatic — and surveyed Marjorie with prolonged, 
tender interest. “Any time now! ” she breathed. 

“ Yes,” said Marjorie desperately. “ The ship 
will be in some time next week. Yes, I’m thrilled. 
It’s — it’s wonderful. Thank you. Miss Kaplan, I 
knew you would be sympathetic.” 

One hand was clenching and unclenching itself- 
where Miss Kaplan, fortunately a young person 
whose own side of emotions occupied her exclu- 
sively, could not see it. 

Miss Kaplan kissed her, quite uninvited, again, 


rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 7 

said Dear little war-bride I ” and — ^just in time, 
Marjorie always swore, to save herself from death, 
fled out. 

It is all very well to be a war-bride when there’s 
a war, but the war was over. 

‘‘ And I’m married,” Marjorie said when the door 
had swung to behind Miss Kaplan, for life! ” 

She was twenty-one. She was little and slender, 
with a wistful, very sweet face like a miniature; 
big dark-blue eyes, a small mouth that tipped down 
a little at the indented corners, and a transparently 
rose and white skin. She looked a great deal 
younger even than she was, and her being Mrs. 
Ellison had amused every one, including herself, 
for the last year she had used the name. As she 
sat down at her desk again, and looked helplessly 
at the keen, dark young face surmounted by an 
officer’s cap, that for very shame’s sake she had 
not taken away from her desk, she looked like a 
frightened little girl. And she was frightened. 

It had been very thrilling, if scary, to be married 
to Francis Ellison, when he wasn’t around. The 
letters — the dear letters! — and the watching for 
mails, and being frightened when there were battles^ 


8 rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 

and wearing the new wedding-ring, had made her 
perfectly certain that when Francis came back she 
would be very glad, and live happily ever after. 
And now that he was coming she was just plain 
frightened, suffocatingly, abjectly scared to 
death. 

“ I mustn’t be! ” she told herself, trying to give 
herself orders to feel differently. ‘‘ I must be very 
glad! ” But it was impossible to do anything with 
herself. She continued to feel as if her execution 
was next week, instead of her reunion with a hus- 
band who wrote that he was looking forward to 

“ If he didn’t describe kissing me,” shivered poor 
little Marjorie to herself, “ so accurately! ” 

She had met Francis just about a month before 
they were married. He had come to see her with 
her cousin, who was in the same company at Platts- 
burg. Her cousin was engaged to a dear friend 
of hers, and it had made it very nice for all four 
of them, because Billy and Lucille weren’t war- 
fiances by any means. They had been engaged 
for a couple of years, in a more or less silent fashion, 
and the war had given them a chance to marry. 
One doesn’t think so much about ways and means 


rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 9 

when the man is going to war and can send you 
an allotment. 

Francis, dark, quick, decided, with a careless 
gaiety that was like that of a boy let out from 
school, had been a delightful person to pair off 
with. And then the other two had been so wrapped 
up in the wonderful chance to get married which 
opened out before them, that marriage — a beauti- 
ful, golden, romantic thing — had been in the air. 
One felt out of it if one didn’t marry. Everybody 
else was marrying in shoals. And Francis had been 
crazy over little Marjorie from the moment he saw 
her — over her old-fashioned, whimsical ways, her 
small defiances that covered up a good deal of shy- 
ness, over the littleness and grace that made him 
want to pick her up and pet her and protect her, 
he said . . . Marjorie could remember, even yet, 
with pleasure, the lovely things he had said to her 
in that tense way he had on the rare occasions when 
he wasn’t laughing. She had fought off marrying 
him till the very last minute. And then the very 
day before the regiment sailed she had given in, 
and the other two — married two weeks by then — 
had whisked her excitedly through it. And then 


lo rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 

they^d recalled him — just two hours after they were 
married, while Marjorie was sitting in the suite 
at the hotel, with Francis kneeling down by her 
in his khaki, his arms around her waist, looking 
up at her adoringly. She could see his face yet, 
uplifted and intense, and the way it had turned to 
a mask when the knock came that announced the 
telegram. 

And it seemed now almost indecent that she 
should have let him kneel there with his head against 
her laces, calling her his wife. She had smiled down 
at him, then, shyly, and — half-proud, half-timid — 
had thought it was very wonderful. 

“When I see him it will be all right! When 
we meet it will all come back! ” she said half-aloud, 
walking restlessly up and down the office. “ It must. 
It will have to.” 

But in her heart she knew that she was wishing 
desperately that the war had lasted ages longer, thaf 
he had been kept a year after the end of the wlr 
instead of eight months; almost, down deep in her 
heart where she couldn^t get at it enough to deny 
it, that he had been killed. . . . Well, she had a 
week longer, anyway. You can do a great deal 


rVE MARRIED MARJORIE ii 

with yourself in a week if you bully hard. And 
the ships were almost always a much longer time 
getting in than anybody said they would be, and 
then they sent you to camps first. 

Marjorie had the too many nerves of the native 
American, but she had the pluck that generally goes 
with them. She forced herself to sit quietly down 
and work at her task, and wished that she could 
stop being angry at herself for telling Lucille that 
Francis had written he was coming home. Because 
Lucille worked where she did, and had promptly 
spread the glad tidings from the top of the office 
to the bottom, and her morning had been a levee. 
Even poor little Mrs. Jardine, whose boy had been 
killed before he had been over two weeks, had 
spoken to Marjorie brightly, and said how glad she 
was, and silent, stiff Miss Gardner, who was said 
never to have had any lovers in her life, had looked 
at her with an envy she tried to hide, and said that 
she supposed Marjorie was glad. 

Well, it’s two weeks, maybe. Two weeks is 
ages.” 

Marjorie dived headfirst into the filing cabinet 
again, and was saying to herself very fast, Tim- 


12 rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 

mins, Tolman, Turnbull — oh, dear, Turnbull ” 

when, very softly, the swinging-door that shut her 
off from the rest of the office was pushed open 
again, and some one crossed sharply to her side. 
She flung up her head in terror. Suppose it should 
be Francis — 

Well, it was. 

She had no more than time for one gasp before 
he very naturally had her in his arms, as one who 
has a right, and was holding her so tight she could 
scarcely breathe. She tried to kiss him back, but 
it was half-hearted. She hoped, her mind working 
with a cold, quick precision, that he could not tell 
that she did not love him. And apparently he could 
not. He let her go after a minute, and flung him- 
self down by her in just the attitude that the knock 
on the door, fifteen months ago, had interrupted. 
And Marjorie tried not to stiffen herself, and not 
to wonder if anybody was coming in, and not to feel 
that a perfect stranger was doing something he had 
no right to. 

It was to be supposed* that she succeeded more or 
less, because when he finally let her go, he looked 
at her as fondly as he had when he entered, and 


I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 13 

began to talk, without much preface, very much 
as if he had only been gone a half hour. 

'' They’ll let you off, won’t they, for the rest of 
the day? But of course they will! I almost ran 
over an old gentleman outside here, and it comes 
to me now that he said something like ‘ take your 
wife home for to-day, my boy! ’ I was in such a 
hurry to get at you. Marge, that I didn’t listen. 
My wife! Good Lord, to think I have her 
again! ” 

She got her breath a little, and stopped shivering, 
and looked at him. He had not changed much; 
one does not in fifteen months. It was the same 
eager, dark young face, almost too sharply cut for 
a young man’s, with very bright dark eyes. The 
principal difference was in his expression. Before 
he went he had had a great deal of expression, a 
face that showed almost too much of what he 
thought. That was gone. His face was younger- 
looking, because the flashing of changes over it 
was gone. He looked wondering, very tired, and 
dulled somehow. And he spoke without the turns 
of speech that she and her friends amused each 
other with, the little quaintnesses of conscious 


14 I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 

fancy. As if he’d been talking to children,” she 

thought. 

Then she remembered that it was not that. He 
had been giving orders, and taking them, and being 
on firing-lines; all the things that he had written 
her about, and that had seemed so like story-books 
when she got the letters. His being so changed made 
it real for the first time. . . . And then an unworthy 
feeling — as if she simply could not face the roman- 
tic and tender eyes of all the office — everybody hav- 
ing the same feelings about her that Miss Kaplan 
had, even if they were well-bred enough to phrase 
them politely. 

“ Shall we go? ” she asked abruptly, while this 
feeling was strong in her. 

“ Not for a minute. I want to see the place 
where my wife has spent her last year ...” 

He stood with his arm still around her — would 
he never stop touching her? — and surveyed the 
office with the same sort of affectionate amusement 
he might have given to a workbasket of hers, or a 
piece of embroidery. Marjorie slipped from under 
his arm and put her hat on. 


15 


I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 
I’m ready now,” she said. 

They walked out of the little office, and through 
the long aisle down the center of the floor of the 
office-building, Marjorie, still miserably conscious 
of the eyes, and the emotions behind the eyes, and 
quite as conscious that they were emotions that she 
ought to be ashamed of minding. 

Now where shall we go for luncheon?” de- 
manded Francis joyously, as they got outside. He 
caught her hand in his surreptitiously and said You 
darling! ” under his breath. For a minute the old 
magic of his swift courtship came back to her, and 
she forgot the miserable oppression of facing fifty 
years of wedded life with a stranger; and she smiled 
up at him. Then, as he caught her hand in his, 
quite undisguisedly this time, and held it under his 
arm, the repulsion came back. 

“Anywhere you like,” she answered his ques- 
tion. 

“ We’ll go to the biggest, wildest, wooliest place 
in the city, where the band plays the most music,” 
he announced. “ Going to celebrate. Come on, 
honey. And then I have a fine surprise for you, 
as soon as we go back to the flat. Lucille won’t 


i6 rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 

be back till five, will she? And thank goodness 

for that! ” 

Lucille and Marjorie, pending the return of their 
husbands, shared a tiny flat far uptown on the west 
side. Marjorie had described it at length in her 
letters, until Francis had said that he could find 
his way around it if he walked in at midnight. But 
his intimacy with it made her feel that there was 
no place on earth she could call her own. 

Tell me now,” she demanded. 

Francis laughed again, and shook his head. 

“ It will do you good to guess. Come now, which 
— Sherry’s or the Plaza or the Ritz? ” 

“ Sherry’s — they’re going to close it soon, poor 
old place! ” 

“ Then we’ll celebrate its obsequies,” said Francis, 
grinning cheerfully. 

Before he went he had smiled, somehow, as if 
he had been to a very excellent college and a super- 
fine prep school of many traditions — as, indeed, he 
had — but now it was exactly the grin, Marjorie re- 
alized, still with a feeling of unworthiness, of the 
soldier, sailor, and marine grinning so artlessly from 
the War Camp Community posters. In his year of 


rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 17 

foreign service, Francis had shaken off the affecta- 
tions of his years, making him, at twenty-five, a 
much older and more valuable man than Marjorie 
had parted with. But she didn’t like it, or what 
she glimpsed of it. Whether he was gay in this 
simple, new way, or grave in the frighteningly old 
one, he was not the Francis she had built up for 
herself from a month’s meetings and a few memo- 
ries. 

He smiled at her flashingly again as they settled 
themselves at the little table in just the right spot 
and place they had chosen. 

“ Wondering whether I’ll eat with my knife? ” he 
demanded, quite at random as it happened, but alto- 
gether too close to Marjorie’s feelings to be com- 
fortable. 

She colored up to her hair. 

No — no! I know you wouldn’t do that! ” she 
asseverated so earnestly that he went off into an- 
other gale of affectionate laughter. 

And then he addressed himself to the joyous task 
of planning a luncheon that they would never of 
them either forget, he said. He took the waiter into 
their confidence to a certain degree, and from then 


i8 I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 

on a circle of silent and admiring service inclosed 

them. 

But you needn’t think we’re going to linger over 
it, Marjorie,” he informed her. “ I want to get 
up to where you live, and be alone with you.” 

Of course,” said Marjorie mechanically, saying 
a little prayer to the effect that she needed a great 
deal of help to get through this situation, and she 
hoped it would come in sight soon. She could not 
eat very much. It was all very good, and the band 
played ravishingly to the ears of Francis, who sent 
buoyantly across and demanded such tunes as he 
was fondest of. There was one which they played 
to which he sang, under his breath, a profane song 
which ran in part: 

“ And we’ll all come home 

And get drunk on ginger pop — 

For the slackers voted the country dry 
While we went over the top.” 

And then, when the meal was two-thirds over, 
Marjorie wished she hadn’t offered up any prayers 
for help to get through the situation. Because softly 
up to their table strolled a tall, thin young man 


rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 19 

with a cane, gray silk gloves, and a dreamy if 
slightly nervous look, and said discontentedly^ 
Marjorie Ellison! How wonderful to find you 
here! You will let me sit down at your table, won^t 
you, and meet your soldier-friend? ” 

If Marjorie had never written to Francis about 
Bradley Logan it would have been all right, quite 
a rescue, in fact. But in those too fatally discursive 
letters; the letters which had come finally to feel 
like a sympathetic diary with no destination, she 
had rather enlarged on him. He had been admiring 
her at disconnected intervals ever since she first 
met him. He had not been able to get in the army 
because of some mysterious neurasthenic ailment 
about which he preserved a hurt silence, as to de- 
tails, but mentioned a good deal in a general way. 
It kept him from making engagements, it made him 
unable to go long distances; Marjorie had described 
all the scattered hints about it in her letters to 
Francis, who had promptly written back that un- 
doubtedly the little friend had fits; and referred 
to him thereafter, quite without malice, as, “ your 
fit-friend.” She had an insane terror, as she intro- 
duced him, lest she should explain him to Francis 


20 I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 

in an audible aside by that name. However, it was 
unnecessary. Francis placed him immediately, it 
was to be seen, and was cold almost to rudeness. 
Logan did not notice it much. He sat down with 
them, declined the food Marjorie offered, ordered 
himself three slivers of dry toast and a cup of 
lemonless and creamless tea, and sipped them and 
nibbled them as if even they were a concession to 
manners. 

What really was the matter with Logan Marjorie 
was doomed never to know. Francis told her after- 
wards, with a certain marital brevity, that it was a 
combination of dry toast and thinking too much 
about French poets. His literary affiliations, which 
he earned his living by, had stopped short at the 
naughty nineties, when everybody was very un- 
healthy and soulful and hinted darkly at tragedies; 
the period of the Yellow Book and Aubrey Beardsley 
and Arthur Symons and Dowson, and the last end 
of Wilde. He undoubtedly had the charming and 
fluent manners of his time, anachronism though he 
was. And he talked a great deal, and very bril- 
liantly, if a bit excitedly. He plunged now, in his 
charming, high, slightly too mannered voice, into 


I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 21 

a discussion with Marjorie on the absolute rotten- 
ness of the modern magazine, considered from the 
viewpoint of style. He overwhelmed them with in- 
stances of how all magazines were owned by persons 
who neither had cultivation nor desired any. Fran- 
cis answered him very little, so Marjorie, wifely be- 
fore her time, found herself trying nervously to keep 
up with Logan, and hurling more thoughts at him 
about Baudelaire than she had known she pos- 
sessed. As a matter of fact she’d never read any 
of him, but Logan thought she had to his dying 
day, which says a good deal for her brains. Pres- 
ently Francis summoned the waiter in rather a mar- 
tial voice, demanded a taxi of him efficiently, and 
Marjorie found herself swept away from Logan and 
taxi-ing extravagantly uptown before she knew what 
she was at. 

Francis wasn’t cross, it appeared. The first thing 
he did when he got her in the cab was to sweep 
her close to him — the second to burst into a peal 
of delighted laughter, and quote 

“ I had a cow, a gentle cow, who browsed beside my door, 
Did not think much of Maeterlinck, and would not, 
furthermore! ” 


22 


rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 
“ Heavens ! ” he ended, “ that fool and his mag- 
azine editors! Nobody but you could have been 
so patient with the poor devil, MargeJ’ 

He leaned her and himself back in the cab, and 
stared contemplatively out at New York going by. 
‘‘ And to think — and — to — think — that while half of 
decent humanity has been doing what it’s been do- 
ing to keep the world from going to hell, that fool 
— that fool — ^has been sitting at home nibbling toast 
and worrying about what is style! . . . I’ll tell him! 
Style is what I’ll have when I get these clothes 
off, and some regular ones. You’ll have to help 
me pick ’em out, Marge. You’ll find I’ve no end of 
uses for a wife, darling.” 

‘^I hope you’ll make me useful,” she answered 
in a small voice. Fortunately she saw the ridicu- 
lousness of what she had said herself before the con- 
strained note of her voice reached her husband, and 
began, a little nervously, to laugh at herself. So 
that passed off all right. 

“ Will life be just one succession of hoping things 
pass off all right? ” she wondered. And she did 
wish Francis wasn’t so scornful about all the things 
Logan said. For Logan, in spite of his mysterious 


I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 23 

disability, was very brilliant; he wrote essays for 
real magazines that you had to pay thirty-five cents 
for, and when Marjorie said she knew him people v 
were always very respectful and impressed. Mar- 
jorie had been brought up to respect such things 
very much, herself, in a pretty Westchester suburb, 
where celebrities were things which passed through 
in clouds of glory, lecturing for quite as much as 
the club felt it could afford. A celebrity who let 
you talk to him, nay, seemed delighted when you 
let him talk to you, couldn’t be as negligible as 
Francis seemed to think him. . . . Francis didn’t 
seem as if he had ever read anything, ... It was 
a harmless question to ask, at least. 

“ What did you read, over there? ” she asked 
him. 

“ We read anything we could get hold of that 
would take our minds,” was the answer, rather 
grimly. Then, more lightly, “ When I wasn’t read- 
ing detective stories I was studying books on for- 
estry. Did you know you had married a forester 
bold. Marge? ” 

“ Of course I remembered you said that was what 
you did,” she answered, relieved that the talk was 


24 rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 

veering away, for one moment, from them- 
selves. 

“ Poor little girl, you haven’t had a chance to 
know very much about me,” he said tenderly. 

Well, I know a lot more about it than I did when 
I went away. Oh, the trees in France, dear! It’s 
worse to think of the trees than of the people, I 
think sometimes. I suppose that’s because they 
always meant a lot to me — very much as a jeweler 
would feel badly about all the spoons the Crown 
Prince took home with him. . . . Anyway, they 
wanted me to stay over there and do reforestation. 
Big chances. But I didn’t feel as if I could stay 
away from little old New York — naturally Marge 
had nothing to do with it — another hour. Would 
you have liked to go to Italy and watch me re- 
forest, Marjorie? ” 

Marjorie’s ^‘Oh, wo/” was very fervent. She 
also found herself thinking stealthily that even any 
one as efficient as Francis could not reforest the 
city of New York, and that therefore any position 
he had would very likely let her off. Maybe he 
might go very soon. 

With this thought in her mind she led the way 


I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 25 

up the three flights of stairs to the tiny apartment 
she and Lucille Strong shared. If Francis had not 
spoken as they reached the door she might have 
carried it through. But just as she fitted her key 
in the door he did speak, behind her, an arm about 
her. 

In another minute you and I will be alone to- 
gether; in our own home — my wife ” 

He took the key gently from her hand; he un- 
locked the door, and drew her in, with his arms 
around her. He pushed the door to behind them, 
and bent down to kiss her again, very tenderly and 
reverently. And in that instant Marjorie’s self- 
control broke. 


CHAPTER II 


^‘Oh, please don’t touch me, just for a minute 1 
she exclaimed. “ Please — please — ^just stop a min- 
ute! 

She did not realize that her tone was very much 
that of a patient addressing a dentist. Francis’s 
arms dropped, and he looked at her, all the light 
going out of his face, and showing its weary lines. 
He closed the door entirely, carefully. He went 
mechanically over to a chair and sat down on it, 
always with that queer carefulness; he laid his 
cap beside him, and looked at Marjorie, crouched 
against the door. 

“ Please come over here and sit down,” he said 
very courteously, but with the boyishness gone 
from his voice even more completely than Marjorie 
had wished. 

She came very meekly and sat opposite him, with 
a little queer cold feeling around her heart. 

“ Please look at me,” he asked gently. She lifted 


26 


rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 27 

her blue eyes miserably to his, and tried to smile. 
But unconsciously she shrank a little as she did so, 
and he saw it. 

“ I won’t touch you — not until you want me to,” 
he began. What’s the matter, Marjorie? Is it 

nerves, or are you afraid of me, or ” 

It — it was just your coming so suddenly,” she 
lied miserably. It upset me. That was all.” 

In her mind there was fixed firmly the one thing, 
that she mustn’t be a coward, she must go through 
with it, she must pretend well enough to make Fran- 
cis think she felt the way she ought to. The Francis 
of pre-war times would have been fooled; but this 
man had been judging men and events that took 
as keen a mind as seeing through a frightened girl. 
He looked at her musingly, his face never changing. 
She rose and came over to him and put her hand 
on his shoulder. She even managed to laugh. 

“ Do you mind my being upset? ” she asked. 
No,” he said, if that’s all it is. But you have 
a particular kind of terror about you that I don’t 
like. Or I think you have.” 

She took her hand away, hurt by the harshness 
of his voice — then, seeing his face, understood that 


28 I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 

he was not knowingly harsh. She had hurt him 
terribly by that one unguarded moment, and she 
would have to work very hard to put it out of sight. 

I — I haven’t any terror ” she began to say. 

He made himself smile a little at that. 

You mustn’t have,” he said. “ We’ll sit down 
on the davenport over there that Lucille’s grand- 
mother gave her for a wedding-present — you see 
how well I remember the news about all the fur- 
niture? And we’ll talk about it all quietly.” 

“ There’s nothing to talk about,” said Marjorie 
desperately. She went obediently over to the dav- 
enport and sat down by him. 

“ You were upset at seeing me? ” he began. 

“It was — well, it was so sudden ! ” dimpled Mar- 
jorie, quoting the tag with the sudden whimsicality 
which even death would probably find her using. 

“ And I still seem — do I seem like a strange per- 
son to you, dear? ” he asked wistfully. “ You don’t 
seem strange to me, you know. You seem like the 
wife I love.” 

The worst of it was that when Francis was gay 
and like a playmate, as he had been at their 
luncheon before Logan came, she could feel that 


rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 29 

things were nearly all right. But when he spoke 
as he was speaking now the terror of him came back 
worse than ever. 

No. No, you don’t seem strange at all,” she 
said. Why should you? ” But while she spoke 
the words she knew they were not true. She looked 
at him, and his face was like a stranger’s face. 
She had known other men as well as she had known 
her husband, except for the brief while when she 
had promised to marry him. She took stock of his 
features; the straight, clearly marked black brows 
under the mark the cap made on his forehead; the 
rather high cheekbones, the clear-cut nose and chin, 
the little line of black mustache that did not hide 
his hard-set and yet sensitive lips; the square, rather 
long jaw — “He’ll have deep lines at the sides 
of his mouth in a few more years,” she thought, 
and — “ He’s much darker than I remembered him. 
But he has no color under the brown. I thought 
he had a good deal of color ...” She appraised 
his face, not liking it altogether, as if she had never 
seen it before. His hand, long, narrow, muscular, 
burned even more deeply than his face, and with a 
fine black down lying close over it, seemed a hand 


30 I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 

she had never seen or been touched by before. 
But that was his wedding-ring — ^her wedding-ring 
— on the thin third finger. She even knew that in- 
side it was an inscription — “ Marjorie — Fran- 
cis ’’ and the date of their wedding. Hers was 

like it. He had bought them and had them in- 
scribed with everything but the actual date before 
she had given in; that had been put in, of course, 
the week before their marriage. Oh, what right 
had he to be wearing her wedding-ring? 

Would you like a little time to think it over? ” 
he asked heavily. 

She was irrationally angry at him. What right 
had he to think she needed time to think it over? 
Why hadn’t he the decency to be deceived by her 
behavior? Then she stole another look at him, 
with all the gaiety and youth gone out of his face, 
and made up her mind that the anger ought to be 
on his side. But it apparently was not. 

Oh, please don’t mind! ” she begged him, aban- 
doning some of her defenses. ‘‘ It’s true, I do feel 
a liftle strange, but I’m sure it will all come straight 
if — if I wait a little. You see, you were gone so 
long.” 


rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 31 

Yes. I worried a lot about it on shipboard,” 
he answered her directly. His face did not lighten, 
but there was a sort of relief in his tone, as if actu- 
ally knowing the truth was better than being fenced 
with. I thought to myself — I hurried her into it 
so. I wonder if she really will care when I come 
back.’ It was such a long time. But then your 
letters were so sweet and loving, and I cared such 
a lot ” 

His voice broke. He had been talking on a care- 
fully emotionless dead level, but now he suddenly 
stopped as if he had come to the end of his control. 
But he was only silent a moment, and went on: 

I cared so much that I thought you must. That’s 
a queer thing, isn’t it? You’ve known all your 
life that other people think if they care enough 
the other person will care, and you know they’re 
idiots. And then your time comes, and you go and 
are the same old idiot yourself. . . . Queer. Well, 
I’m sorry, Marjorie. Shall I go now? We can 
think about what we’d better do next time we talk 
it over.” 

''Oh, please, please! ” begged Marjorie. "Oh, 
Francis, I feel like a dog — a miserable, little cow- 


32 rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 

ard-dog. And — and I don’t know why you’re mak- 
ing all this up. I — I haven’t said anything like 
what ” 

He put his arm around her, not in the least as 
if he were her lover. It only felt protecting, not like 
a man’s touch. 

I would be glad to think you cared for me. 
But I am almost sure you don’t. Everything you 
have said, and every one of your actions since we 
came in, have seemed to me as if you didn’t. It 
isn’t your fault, poor little thing. It’s mine for 
hurrying you into it. . . . Marjorie, Marjorie — 
do you? ” 

There was an intense entreaty in his tone. But 
she knew that only the truth would do. 

“ No,” she said, dropping her head. 

“ I thought not,” he said, rising stiffly and cross- 
ing to the door. “Well, I’ll go now. I’ll come 
back some time to-morrow, whenever it’s most con- 
venient for you, and we’ll discuss details.” 

She ran after him. She did feel very guilty. 

“Oh, Francis — Francis! Please don’t go! I’m 
sure I’ll feel the way I should when I’ve tried a 
little longer! ” 


rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 35« 

He stopped for a moment, but only to write some- 
thing down on a piece of paper. 

‘‘ There’s my telephone number,” he said. “ No, 
Marjorie, I can’t stay any longer. This has been 
pretty bad. I’ve got to go off and curl up a minute, 
I think, if you don’t mind. . . . Oh, dearest, don’t 
you see that I can't stay? I’ll have myself straight^ 

ened out by to-morrow, but ” 

He had been acting very reasonably up to now.. 
But now he flung himself out the door like a tor- 
nado. It echoed behind him. Marjorie did not 
try to keep him. She sat still for a minute longer, 
shivering. Then she began to cry. She certainly 
did not want him for her husband, but equally she 
did not want him to go off and leave her. So she 
went over to the davenport again, where she could 
cry better, and did wonders in that line, in a steady, 
low-spirited way, till Lucille came breezily in. 

Lucille Strong was a plump, exuberant person 
with corn-colored hair and bright blue eyes and the 
most affectionate disposition in the world. She also 
had a quick, fly-away temper, and more emotions 
than principles. But her sense of humor was so 
complete, and her funniness so steady that nobody 


34 I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 

demanded great self-sacrifice from her. Who 
wouldn’t give anybody the biggest piece of cake 
and the best chair and the most presents, for the 
sake of having a Little Sunshine in the home? At 
least, that was the way Billy Strong had looked 
at it. He had been perfectly willing to put off his 
marriage until Lucille decreed that there was money 
enough for her to have her little luxuries after 
marriage, in order to eventually possess Lucille. 
People always and automatically gave her the lion’s 
share of all material things, and she accepted them 
quite as automatically. She was a very pleasant 
housemate, and if she coaxed a little, invisibly, in 
order to acquire the silk stockings and many birth- 
day presents and theater tickets which drifted to 
her, why, as she said amiably, people value you more 
when they do things for you than when you do 
things for them. 

‘‘Why, you poor lamb!” she said with sincere 
sympathy, pouncing on the desolate and very limp 
Marjorie. “ What’s the matter? Did Francis have 
to go away from you? Look here, honey, you can 
have my ” 

What Lucille was about to offer was known only 


rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 35 

to herself, because she never got any farther. Mar- 
jorie sat up, her blue eyes dark-circled with tears, 
and perhaps with the strain she had been under- 
going. 

• ‘‘Yes,’’ she said in a subdued voice. “He — he 

had to go. He’ll be back to-morrow.” 

Lucille pounced again, and kissed Marjorie raptu- 
rously, flushed with romance. 

“ Oh, isn’t it wonderful to have him back! And 
Billy may be back any minute, too! Marge, what 
on earth shall we do about the apartment? It isn’t 
big enough for three; and I can’t keep it on alone. 
And the wretched thing’s leased for six months 
longer. You know we thought they’d be coming 
back together. But you and Francis can take it 
over ” 

“ I — I don’t think we need to worry about that,” 
said Marjorie, “ for a while longer. I’ve made up 
my mind to go on working. I’d be restless without 
my work. Filing’s really very exciting when you’re 
accustomed to it ” 

Lucille released her housemate and leaned back 
on the davenport, the better to laugh. As she did 
so she flung off her coat and dropped it on the 


36 rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 

floor, in the blessed hope that Marjorie would pick 

it up, which usually happened. But Marjorie did 

not. 

‘‘ Filing,” Lucille said through her laughter, is 
undoubtedly the most stimulating amusement known 
to the mind of man. I wonder they pay you for 
doing it — they ought to offer it as a reward! Oh, 
Marge, you’ll kill me! Now, you might as well 
be honest, my child. You know you always tell 
me things eventually — why not now? What are 
your plans, and did Francis bring any souvenirs? 
I told him to be sure to bring back some of that 
Prench perfume that you wouldn’t let him get you 
because it was too expensive for his income. I 
T^onder he ever respected you again after that, in- 
cidentally. Did he? ” 

Did he respect me? I don’t know, I’m sure,” 
said Marjorie dispiritedly. She knew that she would 
tell Lucille all about it in two more minutes, and 
she did not want to. 

No, darling! Did he bring the perfume? ” 

I don’t know,” said Marjorie. “ Lucille, you 
Laven’t had your bath yet.” 

“ Did you light the hot water for me? ” 


rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 37 

“ No, I forgot,” said Marjorie. 

‘‘All right. I’ll light it,” said Lucille amiably. 
She was deflected by this, and trotted out into the 
tiny kitchen to light the gas under the hot water 
heater. She came back in an exquisite blue crepe 
negligee, and curled herself back of Marjorie on the 
davenport while she waited for the water to heat, 
and for Marjorie to tell her about it all. 

“ I wish my hair curled naturally,” she said idly, 
slipping her fingers up the back of Marjorie’s neck, 
where little fly-away rings always curled. 

“ I wish it did,” said Marjorie with absent impo- 
liteness. 

Lucille laughed again. 

“ Come back, dear ! Remember, I haven’t any 
happy reunion to weep over yet, and be S5mipa- 
thetic. And I have an engagement for dinner, and 
how will I ever keep it if you don’t tell me every- 
thing Francis said? When did he see Billy last? ” 

“ He didn’t say.” 

“ What did he say? ” 

“ He said,” said Marjorie, turning around with 
blazing eyes and pouring forth her words like a 
fountain, “ that he’d wondered if I really loved him. 


38 rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 

and now he was sure I didn’t. And that he’d come 
back some time to-morrow and discuss details. And 
he gave me his telephone number, and said he 
couldn’t stay any longer, and it was pretty bad, and 
he had to curl up ” 

“Marjorie! Marjorie! Stop! This is a bad 
dream you’ve had, or something out of Alice in 
Wonderland! Francis never said he had to curl up. 
Curl up what? 

“ Curl up himself, I suppose,” said Marjorie with 
something very like a sob. “ I was perfectly ra- 
tional and it made me feel dreadful to hear him say 
it, and I knew just what he meant. Curl up like 
a dog when it’s hurt. Curl up! ” 

Don't! I am!" said Lucille. “If you issue 
any more orders in that tone I’ll look like a cater- 
pillar. Now, what really did happen, Marjorie? ” 
she ended in a gentler tone and more seriously. 

She pulled Marjorie’s head over on to her own 
plump shoulder, and put an arm round her. 

“ It was all my fault. I don’t love him any more. 
I don’t want to be married to him. I didn’t mean 
to show it, I meant to be very good about it, but 
he knows so much more than he did when he went 


rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 39 

away. He knew it directly. And now he’s dread- 
fully hurt.” 

'‘You poor little darling! What a horrid time 
you’ve been having all this time everybody’s been 
thinking you were looking forward to his coming 
home. Why, you must have nearly gone crazy! ” 

“ It’s worse for him,” said Marjorie in a subdued 
voice, nestling down on Lucille’s shoulder. 

" Oh, I don’t know,” said Lucille comfortably. 
" Men can generally take care of themselves. . . . 
But are you sure you don’t love him the least little 
bit? ” 

" I’m afraid of him. He’s like somebody strange. 
. . . It’s so long ago.” 

" So long ago an’ so far away, le’s hope it ain’ 
true! ” quoted Lucille amiably. "Well, darling, if 
you don’t want to marry him you needn’t — I mean, 
if you don’t want to stay married to him you needn’t. 
I’m sure something can be done. Francis is per- 
fectly sure to do anything you like, he adores you 
so.” 

But this didn’t seem to give comfort, either. And 
as the boiler was moaning with excess of heat, Lu- 
cille dashed for the bathtub. She talked to Mar- 


40 I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 

jorie through the flimsy door as she splashed, to the 
effect that Marjorie had much better let her call 
up another man and go out on a nice little four- 
some, instead of staying at home. But there Mar- 
jorie was firm. She would have preferred anything 
to her own society, but she felt as if any sort of a 
party would have been like breaking through first 
mourning. 

So she saw Lucille, an immaculate vision of satins 
and picture hats, go off gaily with her cavalier, and 
remained herself all alone in the little room, lying 
on the sofa, going over everything that had hap- 
pened and ending it differently. She was very tired, 
and felt guiltier and guiltier as time went on. 
Finally she rose and went to the telephone and called 
the number Francis had left. 

The voice that answered her was very curt and 
very quiet. 

“ Yes. . . . This is Captain Ellison. Yes, Mar- 
jorie? What is it? ” 

It seemed harder than ever to say what she had 
to say in the face of that distant, unemotional voice. 
But Marjorie had come to a resolve, and went 
steadily on. 


41 


rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 

“ I called up to say, Francis, that I am ready to 
go with you anywhere you want to, at any time. 
I will try to be a good wife to you.” 

She clung to the telephone, her heart beating like 
a triphammer there in the dark, waiting for his an- 
swer. It seemed a long time in coming. When it 
did, it was furious. 

“ I don’t want you to go with me anywhere, at 
any time. I don’t want a wife who has to try to 
be a good wife to me.” 

He hung up with an effect of flinging the receiver 
in her face. 

Marjorie almost ran back to the davenport — 
she was beginning to feel as if the davenport was 
the nearest she had to a mother — and flung herself 
on it in a storm of angry tears. He was unjust. 
He was violent. She didn’t want a man like that 
— what on earth had she humiliated herself that 
way for, anyway? What was the use of trying 
to be honorable and good and fair and doing things 
for men, when they treated you like that? Francis 
had proposed and proposed and proposed — she 
hadn’t been so awfully keen on marrying him. . . . 
It had just seemed like the sort of thing it would 


42 I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 

be thrilling to do. Well, thank goodness he did 
feel that way. She was better off without people 
like that, anyhow. She would go back home to 
Westchester, and live a patient, meek, virtuous life 
under Cousin Anna Stevenson’s thumb, as she had 
before she got the position at the office or got mar- 
ried. She certainly couldn’t go back to the office 
and explain it all to them. At least, she wouldn’t. 
It would be better, even if Cousin Anna did treat 
everybody as if they were ten and very foolish. . . . 
And she had refused the offer of a nice foursome 
and one of Lucille’s cheerful friends, to stay home 
and be treated this way! 

She rose and went to the telephone again, with 
blazing cheeks. 

She called up, on the chance, Logan’s number; 
and amazingly got him. And she invited him on 
the spot to come over the next evening and have 
something in a chafing-dish with Lucille and her- 
self. Lucille, she knew, had no engagement for 
that evening, and could produce men, always, out 
of thin air. Marjorie chose Logan because Francis 
had said he didn’t like him. She had been a little 
too much afraid, before that, of Logan’s literariness 


rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 43 

to dare call Eim up. But that night she would 
have dared the Grand Cham of Tartary, if that 
dignitary had had a phone number and been an 
annoyance to Francis Ellison. 

Logan, to her surprise, accepted eagerly, and even 
forgot to be mannered. He did, it must be said, 
keep her at the telephone, which was a stand-up one, 
for an hour, while he talked brilliantly about the 
Italian renaissance in its ultimate influence on the 
arts and crafts movement of the present day. To 
listen to Logan was a liberal education at any mo- 
ment, if a trifle too much like attending a lecture. 
But at least he didn’t expect much answering. 

She went to the office, next day, in more or less 
of a dream. She was very quiet, and worked very 
hard. Nobody said much to her; she took care not 
to let them. When stray congratulations came her 
way, as they were bound to, and when old Mr. Mor- 
rissey, the vice-head, said, I suppose we can’t hope 
to keep you long now,” and beamed, she answered 
without any heartbeatings or difficulty. She was 
quite sure she would never feel gay again; she had 
had so much happen to her. But it was rather 
pleasant not to be able to have any feelings, if a little 


44 I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 

monotonous. The only thing at all on her mind 
was the question as to how much cheese a party 
of four needed for a rarebit, and whether Logan 
would or could eat rarebits at night. And even 
that was to a certain degree a matter of in- 
difference. 

She finally decided that scallops a la King might 
be more what he would eat. She bought them on 
her way home, together with all the rest of the 
things she needed. Lucille had produced a fourth 
person with her usual lack of effort, and it prom- 
ised to be — if anything in life could have been any- 
thing but flavorless — rather a good party. 

In fact, it was. It was a dear little apartment 
that the girls shared, with a living-room chosen es- 
pecially for having nice times in. It was lighted 
by tall candles, and had a gas grate that was almost 
human. There was a grand piano which took up 
more than its share of room, there was the daven- 
port aforesaid, there were companionable chairs and 
taborets acquired by Lucille and kept by Marjorie 
in the exact places where they looked best; there 
were soft draperies, also hemmed and put up by 
Marjorie. The first thing visitors always said about 


I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 45 

it was that it made them feel comfortable and at 
home. They generally attributed the homelikeness 
to Lucille, who was dangerously near looking ma- 
tronly, rather than to Marjorie, who would be more 
like a firefly than a matron even when she became 
a grandmother. 

Marjorie, with cooking to do, tied up in a long 
orange colored apron, almost forgot things. She 
loved to make things to eat. Lucille, meanwhile, 
sat on the piano-stool and played snatches of “ The 
Long, Long Trail,” and the men, Lucille’s negligible 
one and Marjorie’s Mr. Logan, made themselves 
very useful in the way of getting plates and ar- 
ranging piles of crackers. The small black kitten 
which had been a present to Lucille from the jani- 
tor, who therefore was a mother to it while the 
girls were out, sat expectantly on the edge of all 
the places where he shouldn’t be, purring loudly 
and having to be put down at five-minute in- 
tervals. 

“ I suppose this is a sort of celebration of your 
having your husband back,” said the Lucille man 
presently to Marjorie. He had been told so, indeed, 
by Lucille, who was under that impression herself. 


46 I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 

Logan looked faintly surprised. He, to be frank, 
had forgotten all about Marjorie’s having a husband 
who had to be celebrated. 

Marjorie nearly spilled the scallops she was serv- 
ing at that moment, and the kitten, losing its self- 
control entirely, climbed on the table with a cry 
of entreaty for the excellent fish-smelling dishful 
of things to eat. It was lucky for Marjorie that 
he did, because while she was struggling with him 
Lucille answered innocently for her. 

Yes, more or less. But he’s late. Where’s your 
perfectly good husband. Marge? ” 

^^Late, I’m afraid,” Marjorie answered, smiling, 
and wondering at herself for being able to smile. 
“ We aren’t to wait for him.” 

“ Sensible child,” Lucille answered. “ I’m cer- 
tainly very hungry.” 

She drew her chair up to the low table the men 
had pushed into the center of the room, sent one 
of them to open the window, rather than turn out 
the cheerful light of the gas grate, and the real 
business of the party began. 

It was going on very prosperously, that meal; 
even Mr. Logan was heroically eating the same 


rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 47 

things the rest did, and not taking up more than 
his fair share of the conversation, when there was 
a quick step on the stairs. Nobody heard it but 
Marjorie, who stood, frozen, just as she had risen 
to get a fork for somebody. She knew Francis’s 
step, and when he clicked the little knocker she 
forced herself to go over and let him in. 

He came in exactly as if he belonged there; but 
after one quick glance at the visitors he drew Mar- 
jorie aside into the little inner room. 

Marjorie, IVe come to say I was unkind and 
unfair over the telephone. IVe made up my mind 
that you are fonder of me than you know. I think 
it will be all right — it was foolish of me to be 
too proud to take you unless you were absolutely 
willing. Let me take back what I said, and 
forgive me. I know it will be all right — 
Marjorie! ” 

She gave him a furious push away from her. 
Her eyes blazed. 

It never will be all right! It isn’t going to have 
a chance to be! ” she told him, as angry as he had 
been when she called him up. You had your 
chance and you wouldn’t take it. I don’t want to 


48 rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 

be your wife, and I never will be. That’s all there 

is to say.” 

She took a step in the direction of the outer 
room. He put out a hand to detain her. 

‘‘Marjorie! Marjorie! Don’t!” 

“ I’m going out there, and going to keep on having 
the nice time I had before you came. If you try 
to do anything I’ll probably make a scene.” 

“ You’re going to give me one more chance,” he 
said. “ That’s settled.” 

She looked at him defiantly. 

“ Try to make me,” was all she said, wrenching 
her wrist out of his hand. 

“ I will,” said Francis grimly. 

She smiled at him brilliantly as he followed her 
into the room where the others were. 

“I’m afraid there isn’t any way,” she said 
sweetly. 

Lucille, who had not seen Francis before, flew 
at him now with a welcome which was affectionate 
enough to end effectually any further ardors or 
defiances. 

“ And you’re in time for your own party after 
all,” she ended, smiling sunnily at him and pushing 


rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 49 

him into a chair. She gave him a plate of scallops 
and a fork, and the party went on as it had before. 
Only Marjorie eyed him with nervous surprise. 
“ What will he do next?’’ she wondered. 


CHAPTER III 


What he did was to eat his scallops a la King with 
appetite, fraternize cheerfully with Lucille’s friend, 
whose name was Tommy Burke, and who was an 
old acquaintance of his, speak to Marjorie occa- 
sionally in the most natural way in the world, and 
altogether behave entirely as if it really was his 
party, and he was very glad that there was a party. 
It is to be said that he ignored Logan rather more 
than politeness demanded. But Logan was so used 
to being petted that he never knew it. Marjorie 
did, and lavished more attention on him defiantly 
to try to make up for it. She thought that the 
evening never would end. 

After the food was finished it was to be ex- 
pected that Lucille would go to the piano, and play 
some more, and that the men would sit about smok- 
ing on the davenport and the taborets, and that every 
one would be pleasantly quiet. But Lucille did 
not. Instead, she and Francis retired to the back 
room, leaving Marjorie and the others to amuse 


50 


I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 51 

each other, and talk for what seemed to Marjorie’s 
strained nerves an eternity of time. It was Francis 
who had called Lucille, moreover, and not Lucille 
who had summoned Francis, as could have been 
expected. 

Finally the other men rose to go. Francis came 
out of the inner room and went with them. Before 
he went he stopped to say to Marjorie: 

“ I told you I wanted to talk things over with 
you. I’ll be back in a half-hour. You seem to be 
so popular that the only way to see you alone is 
to get you in a motor-car, so if you aren’t too tired 
to drive around with me to-night, to a place where 
I have to go, I’ll bring you home safely. ... I 
didn’t mean to speak so sharply to you, Marjorie, 
over the telephone. Please forgive me.” 

“ Certainly,” said Marjorie coldly and tremu- 
lously. It could be seen that she did not forgive 
him in the least. 

He went downstairs with the others, laughing 
with Burke, who had a dozen army reminiscences 
to exchange with him, and bidding as small a 
good-by as decency permitted to Logan. Marjorie 
heard him dash up again, and then run down, as 


52 I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 

if he had left something outside the door and for- 
gotten it. Lucille came over to her and began to 
fuss at her about changing her frock for a heavier 
one, and taking enough wraps. 

“Why, it’s only a short drive,” Marjorie ex- 
postulated. “And I’m not sure that I want to 
go, anyway. I don’t think there’s anything more 
to be said than we have said.” 

Francis, with that disconcerting swiftness which 
he possessed, had come back as she spoke. 

He came close to her, and spoke softly. 

“You used to like the boy you married, Mar- 
jorie. For his sake won’t you do this one thing? 
Give me a hearing — one more hearing.” 

Lucille had come back again with a big loose 
coat, and she was wrapping it round her friend 
with a finality that meant more struggle than poor 
tired Marjorie was capable of making. After all, 
another half-hour of discussion would not matter. 
The end would be the same. She went down with 
them to the big car that stood outside, and even 
managed to say something flippant about its look- 
ing like a traveling house, it was so big. Francis 
established her in the front seat, by him, tucked 


I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 53 

a rug around her, for the night was sharp for May, 
and drove to Fifth Avenue, then uptown. 

She waited, wearily and immovable, for him to 
argue with her further, but he seemed in no hurry 
to commence. They merely drove on and on, and 
Marjorie was content not to talk. It was a clear, 
beautiful night, too late for much traffic, so they 
went swiftly. The ride was pleasant. All that she 
had been through had tired her so that she found 
the silence and motion very pleasant and soothing. 

Finally he turned to her, and she braced herself 
for whatever he might want to say. 

Would you mind if we drove across the river 
for a little while? ’’ he asked. 

“ Why — no,” she said idly. “ Out in the coun- 
try, you mean? ” 

He assented, and they drove on, but not to the 
ferry. They turned, and went up Broadway, far, 
far again. 

“ Where are we? ” asked Marjorie finally. Isn’t 
it time you turned around and took me back? And 
didn’t you have something you wanted to say to 
me? ” 

Yes ” he said absently. “ No, we have all 


54 rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 

the time in the world. There’s no scandal possible 
in being out motoring with your husband, even 
if you shouldn’t get home till daylight.” 

“ But where are we? ” demanded Marjorie again. 

“ The Albany Post Road,” said Francis. This 
meant very little to Marjorie, but she waited an- 
other ten minues before she asked again. 

“ Just the same post road as before,” said Francis 
preoccupiedly, letting the machine out till they were 
going at some unbelievable speed an hour. The 
Albany. Not the Boston.” 

Well, it doesn’t matter to me what post road,” 
remonstrated Marjorie, beginning rather against her 
will to laugh a little, as she had been used to do 
with Francis. “I want to go home.” 

“ You are,” said he. 

“ Oh, is this one of those roads that turns around 
and swallows its own tail? ” she demanded, “ and 
brings you back where you started? ” 

‘‘Just where you started,” he assented, still in 
the same preoccupied voice. 

She accepted this quietly for the moment. 

“ Francis,” she said presently, “ I mean it. I 
want to go home.” 


55 


rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 

“ You are going home/’ said Francis. But not 
just yet.” 

It seemed undignified to row further. She was 
so tired — so very tired! 

Francis did not speak again, and after a little 
while she must have dropped off to sleep; for when 
she came to herself again the road was a different 
one. They were traveling along between rows of 
pines, and the road stretched ahead of them, empty 
and country-looking. She turned and asked sleep- 
ily, “ What time is it, Francis, please? ” 

He bent a little as he shot his wrist-watch for- 
ward enough to look at the phosphorescent dial. 

“ Twenty minutes past three,” he said as if it 
was the most commonplace hour in the world to 
be driving through a country road. 

For a moment she did not take it in. Then she 
threw dignity to the winds. She was rested enough 
to have some fight in her again. 

“ I’m going home! I’m going home if I have 
to walk! ” she said wildly. She started to spring 
up in the car, with some half-formed intention of 
forcing him to stop by jumping out. 

Now, Marjorie, don’t act like a movie-heroine,’^ 


56 rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 

he said commonplacely — and infuriatingly. He also 
took one hand off the steering-wheel and put it 
around her wrist. “ You can’t go back to New York 
unless I take you. We’re fifty miles up New York 
State, and there isn’t a town near at all.” 

Marjorie sat still and looked at him. The car 
went on. 

I don’t understand,” she said. “ You can’t be 
going to abduct me, Francis? ” 

Francis, set as his face was, smiled a little at 
this. 

That isn’t the word, because you don’t abduct 
your lawful wife. But I do want you to try me 
out before you discard me entirely. And 
apparently this is the only way to get you to 
do it.” 

“ What are you going to do? ” she asked. 

“ Want the cards on the table? ” 

She nodded. 

“ All the cards — now? Or would you rather take 
things as they come? ” 

All this time the car was going ahead full speed 
in the moonlight. 

‘‘Everything — now! ” she said tensely. 


rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 57 

He never looked at her as he talked. His eyes 
were on the road ahead. 

Just now — as soon as we get to a spot where it 
seems likely to be comfortable, we’re going to un- 
ship a couple of pup-tents from the back of the 
car, and sleep out here. I have all your things in 
the back of the car. If you’d rather, you can sleep 
in the car; you’re little and I think you could be 
comfortable on the back seat.” 

She interrupted him with a cry of injury. 

“ My things? Where did you get them? ” 

“ Lucille packed them. She worked like a demon 
to get everything ready. She was thrilled.” 

“ Thrilled! ” said Marjorie resentfully. “ I’m so 
sick of people being thrilled I don’t know what to 
do. Vm not thrilled. ... I might have known 
it. It’s just the sort of thing Lucille would be 
crazy over doing. I suppose she feels as if she 
were in the middle of a melodrama.” 

“ I’m sorry, Marjorie, but there’s something about 
you that always makes people feel romantic. ...” 
His voice softened. “I remember the first time 
I saw you, coming into that restaurant a little 
behind Lucille, it made me feel as if the fairy- 


58 I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 

stories I’d stopped believing in had come true all 
over again. You were so little and so graceful, and 
you looked as if you believed in so many wonderful 
things ” 

“Stop!” said Marjorie desperately. “It isn’t 
fair to talk that way to me. I won’t have it. If 
you feel that way you ought to take me back home.” 

“ On the contrary, just the reverse,” quoted Fran- 
cis, who seemed to be getting cooler as Marjorie 
grew more excited. “ You said you’d listen. Be 
a sport, and do listen.” 

“Very well,” said Marjorie sulkily. She was a 
sport by nature, and she was curious. 

“ I’ve taken a job in Canada — reforesting of 
burned-over areas. I had to go to-night at the 
latest. It seemed to me that we hadn’t either of 
us given this thing a fair try-out. I hadn’t a chance 
with you unless I took this one. My idea is for 
you to give me a trial, under any conditions you 
like that include our staying in the same house 
a couple of months. I’m crazy over you. I want 
to stay married to you the worst way. You’re all 
frightened of me, and marriage, and everything, 
now. But it’s just possible that you may be making 


rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 59 

a mistake, not seeing it through. It’s just possible 
that I may be making a mistake, thinking that you 
and I would be happy.” 

Marjorie gave a little tense jerk of outraged 
pride at this rather tactless speech. It sounded too 
much as if Francis might possibly tire of her — 
which it wasn’t his place to do. 

“ And so,” Francis went on doggedly, “ my prop- 
osition is that you go up to Canada with me. 
There’s a fairly decent house that goes with the 
job. There won’t be too much of my society. You 
need a rest anyhow. I won’t hurry you, or do any- 
thing unfair. Only let us try it out, and see if we 
wouldn’t like being married, exactly as if we’d had 
a chance to be engaged before.” 

“ And if we don’t? ” inquired Marjorie. 

“ And if we don’t. I’ll give you the best divorce 
procurable this side of the water.” 

“ You sound as if it was a Christmas present,” 
said Marjorie. 

She thought she was temporizing, but Francis 
accepted it as willingness to do as he suggested. 

“ Then you will? ” he asked. 

“ But — it’s such an awful step to take! ” 


6o I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 

Francis leaned back — she could feel him do it, 
in the dark — and began to argue as coolly as if it 
were not three o’clock in the morning, on an un- 
frequented road. 

‘‘ The most of the step is taken. You haven’t 
anything to do but just go on as you are — no pack- 
ing or walking or letter-writing or anything of the 
sort. Simply stay here in the car with me and 
end at the place in Canada, live there and let me 
be around more or less. If there’s anything you 

want at home that Lucille has forgotten ” 

“ Knowing Lucille, there probably is,” said Mar- 
jorie. 

“ we’ll write her and get it. . . . Well? ” 

Marjorie took a long breath, tried to be 
very wide-awake and firm, and fell silent, think- 
ing. 

She was committed, for one thing. People would 
think it was all right and natural if she went on with 
Francis, and be shocked and upset and everything 
else if she didn’t. Cousin Anna Stevenson would 
write her long letters about her Christian duty, and 
the office would be uncomfortable. And Lucille — 
well, Lucille was a blessed comfort. She didn’t mind 


I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 6t 

what you did so long as it didn’t put her out per- 
sonally. She at least — but Lucille had packed the 
bag! And you couldn’t go and fling yourself on 
the neck of as perfidious a person as that. 

And — it would be an adventure. Francis was 
nice, or at least she remembered it so; a delightful 
companion. He wasn’t rushing her. All he wanted 
was a chance to be around and court her, as far 
as she could discover. True, he was appallingly 
strange, but — it seemed a compromise. And she 
had always liked the idea of Canada. As for eventu- 
ally staying with Francis, that seemed very far off. 
It did not seem like a thing she could ever do. Be- 
ing friends with him she might compass. Of course, 
you couldn’t say that it was a fair deal to Francis, 
but he was bringing it on himself, and really, he 
deserved the punishment. For of course, Marjorie’s 
^ain little mind said irrepressibly to itself, he would 
be fonder of her at the end of the try-out than at 
the beginning. . . . And then a swift wave of anger 
at him came over her, and she decided on the crest 
of it. She would never give in to Francis’s court- 
ship. He wasn’t the sort of man she liked. He 
wasn’t congenial. She had grown bevond him. But 


62 I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 

be deserved what he was going to get. . . . And she 

spoke, 

“ It isn’t fair to you, Francis, because it isn’t 
going to end the way you hope. But I’ll go to 
Canada with you . . 

For a moment she was very sorry she had said 
it, because Francis forgot himself and caught her 
in his arms tight, and kissed her hard. 

“If you do that sort of thing I won't! " she said. 
“ That wasn’t in the bargain.” 

“ I know it wasn’t,” said Francis contritely. 
“ Only you were such a good little sport to 
promise. I won’t do it again unless you say 
I may. . Honestly, Marjorie. Not even before 
people.” 

This sounded rather topsy-turvy, but after awhile 
iit came to Marjorie what he meant — ^just about the 
time she climbed out of the car, sat on its step, and 
watched Francis competently unfurling and setting 
up two small and seemingly inadequate tents and 
flooring them with balsam boughs. He meant that 
there would have to be at least a semblance of 
friendliness on account of the people they lived 
among. She felt more frightened than ever. 


I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 63 

Francis came up to her as if he had felt the 
wave of terror that went over her. 

“ Now you aren’t to worry. I’m going to keep 
my word. You’re safe with me, Marge. I’m going 
to take care of you as if I were your brother and 
your father and your cousin Anna ” 

She broke in with an irrepressible giggle. 

“Oh, please don’t go that far! Two male rela- 
tives will be plenty. . . . I — I really got all the 
care from Cousin Anna that I wanted.” 

He looked relieved at her being able to laugh^ 
and bent over the tents again in the moonlight. 

“ There you are. And here are the blankets. 
We’re near enough to the road so you won’t be 
frightened, and enough in the bushes so we’ll be 
secluded. Good-night. I’ll call you to-morrow, 
when it’s time to go on. I know this part of th^ 
country like my hand, and here’s some water in 
case you’re thirsty in the night. Oh, and here are 
towels.” 

This last matter-of-fact touch almost set Mar- 
jorie off again in hysterical laughter. Being eloped 
with by a gentleman who thoughtfully set towels 
and water outside her door was really too much. 


64 I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 

She pinned the tent together with a hatpin, slipped 
off some of her clothes — it did not seem enough 
like going to bed to undress altogether, and she 
mistrusted the balsam boughs with blankets over 
them that pretended to be a bed in the corner — 
and flung herself down and laughed and laughed 
and laughed till she nearly cried. 

She did not quite cry. The boughs proved to 
have been arranged by a master hand, and she 
was very tired and exceedingly sleepy. She pulled 
hairpins out of her hair in a half-dream, so that 
they had to be sought for painstakingly next morn- 
ing when she woke. She burrowed into the blankets, 
and knew nothing of the world till nine next morn- 
ing. 

“I can’t knock on a tent-flap,” said Francis’s 
buoyant voice outside then. “ But it’s time we were 
on our way, Marjorie. There ought to be a bath- 
robe in that bundle of Lucille’s. Slip it on and I’ll 
show you the brook.” 

She reached for a mirror, which showed that, 
though tousled, she was pretty, took one of the 
long breaths that seemed so frequently necessary 
in dealing with Francis, said “in for a penny, in 


rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 65 

for a pound,” and did as she was directed. The 
bath-robe wasn’t a bath-robe, but something rather 
more civilized, which had been, as a matter of 
fact, part of her trousseau, in that far-off day when 
trousseaux were so frequently done, and seemed such 
fun to buy. She came out of the tent rather timidly. 
“ Good gracious, child, that wasn’t what I meant! ” 
exclaimed Francis, seeming appallingly dressed and 
neat and ready for life. “ It’s too cold for that sort 
of thing. Here! ” 

He picked up one of the blankets, wrapped it 
around her, gave her a steer in a direction away 
from the road, and vanished. 

She went down the path he had pushed her to- 
ward, holding the towels tight in one hand and her 
blanket around her in the other. It was fresh that 
morning, though it was warm for May. And Fran- 
cis seemed to think that she was going to take a 
bath in the brook, which even he could not have 
had heated. She shivered at the idea as she came 
upon it. 

It was an alluring brook, in spite of its unheated 
state. It was very clear and brown, with a pebbled 
bottom that you could see into, and a sort of natural 


66 I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 

round pool, where the current was partly dammed, 
making it waist-deep. She resolved at first to 
wash just her face and hands; then she tried an 
experimental foot, and finished by making a bold 
plunge straight into the ice-cold middle of it. She 
shrieked when she was in, and came very straight 
out, but by the time she was dry she was warmer 
than ever. She ran back to the tent, laughing in 
sheer exuberance of spirits, and dressed swiftly. 
The plunge had stimulated her so that when 
Francis appeared again she ran toward him, feeling 
as friendly as if he weren’t married to her at 
all. 

“ It was — awfully cold — ^but I’m just as hungry 
as I can be! ” she called. “Was there anything 
to eat in the car, along with the towels? ” 

Francis seemed unaccountably relieved by her 
pleasantness. This had been something of a strain 
on him, after all, though it was the first time such 
a thought had occurred to Marjorie. His thin, dark 
face lighted up. 

“ Everything, including thermos bottles,’^ he 
called back. “ We won’t stop to build a fire, be- 
cause we have to hurry; but Lucille ” 


I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 67 

“Lucille!” said Marjorie. “Well, I certainly 
never knew what a wretch that girl was.” 

“ Oh, not a wretch. Only romantic,” said Fran- 
cis, grinning. “ I tell you again, Marjorie, you 
have a fatal effect on people. Look at me — a mat- 
ter-of-fact captain of doughboys — and the minute 
I see that you won’t marry me — stay married to 
me, I mean — I elope with you in a coach and four! ” 
“ I don’t think you ought to laugh about it,” said 
Marjorie, sobering down and stopping short in her 
tracks. 

“ Well, I shouldn’t,” said Francis penitently. 
“ Only I’m relieved, and a little excited, I suppose. 
You see, I like your society a lot, and the idea 
of having it for maybe three months, on any terms 
you like, is making me so pleased I’m making flip- 
pant remarks. I won’t any more, if I remember.” 

And he apparently meant it, for he busied him- 
self in exploring the car, which seemed as inexhausti- 
ble as the Mother’s Bag in the Swiss Family Rob- 
inson, for the food he had spoken of. There was 
a large basket, which he produced and set on a 
stump, and from which he took sandwiches, thermos 
flasks, and — last perfidy of Lucille! — a tin box 


68 I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 

of shrimps a la King, carefully wrapped, and ready 
for reheating. He did it in a little ready-heat af- 
fair which also emerged from the basket, and which 
Marjorie knew well. It was her own, in fact. Re- 
heated shrimps should have killed them both, more 
especially for breakfast. But they never thought 
of that till some days later. Marjorie was so over- 
come by finding her own shrimps facing her, so to 
speak, that nothing else occurred to her — except to 
eat them. They made a very good breakfast, dur- 
ing which Francis was never flippant once. They 
talked decorously about the natural scenery — for- 
tunately for the conversation there was a great deal 
of natural scenery in their vicinity — and somewhat 
about pup-tents, and a little about how nice the 
weather was. After that they cleared up the pieces, 
repacked everything like magic, and went on their 
way very amicably. 


CHAPTER IV 


^‘And now that things are more or less settled, 
wouldn’t you like to know what we are going to 
do? ” inquired Francis. 

“ Haven’t I anything to do with it? ” inquired 
Marjorie, not crossly, but as one seeking informa- 
tion. 

“Almost everything. But you don’t know the 
road to Canada. I thought we’d take it straight 
through in the car, but to-night we will be in more 
civilized parts — in an hour or so, in fact — and you 
can get straightened up a little — not that you look 
as if you needed to, but after a night in the open 
one does feel more or less tossed about, I imagine.” 

Marjorie considered. Ordinarily at this hour 
she would be walking into the office. She would be 
speaking with what politeness one can muster up 
in the morning to Miss Kaplan, who was quite as 
exuberant at five as at seven in the evening; she 
would be hoping desperately that she wasn’t late. 


69 


I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 


70 

and that if she was she would escape Mr. Wild- 
hack, who glared terrifyingly at such young 
women who didn’t get down on schedule time. 
Marjorie was not much on schedule time, but she 
always felt that the occasions when she got there 
too late really ought to be balanced by those 
when she came too early. Instead of all this, she 
was racing north with the fresh wind blowing against 
her face, with no duties and no responsibilities, and 
something that, but for the person who shared it 
with her, promised to be rather fun. Just then 
something came to her. She had an engagement for 
tea with Bradley Logan. 

Suddenly that engagement seemed exceedingly 
important, and something that she should on no 
account have missed. But at least she could write 
to him and explain. 

Have you a fountain-pen? ” she inquired of 
Francis, and can I write sitting here? ” 

'' If you don’t mind writing on a leaf from my 
notebook. It’s all I have.” 

She was privately a little doubtful as to the im- 
pression that such a note would make on Mr. Logan, 
for she remembered one wild tale she had heard 


rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 71 

from him about a man who spent his whole life in a 
secluded room somewhere in France, experimenting 
on himself as to what sort of perfumes and colors 
and gestures made him happiest. None of them had 
made him happy at all, to the best of her remem- 
brance; but the idea Mr. Logan left her with was 
that he was that sort of person himself, and that 
the wrong kind of letter-paper could make him suf- 
fer acutely. She was amused at it, really, but a bit 
impressed, too. One doesn’t want to be thought the 
kind of person who does the wrong thing because 
of knowing no better. Still, it was that or nothing. 

“ Dear Mr. Logan,” she began, more illegibly 
than she knew because of the car’s motion, I am 
so sorry that I have not been able to tell you in 
advance that I couldn’t take tea with you. But 
Mr. Ellison has taken me away rather suddenly. 
He had to go to Canada to take a position. We 
hope we will see you when we get back.” 

She did not know till much later that owing to 
the thank-you-ma’am which they reached simultane- 
ously with the word suddenly ” that when Mr. 
Logan got that note he thought it was “ severely,” 
and that the bad penmanship and generally dis- 


72 rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 

graceful appearance of the loose-leaf sheet, the jerky 
hand, and the rather elderly envelope which was 
all Francis could find — it had been living in a pocket 
with many other things for some time — gave him a 
wrong idea. Mr. Logan, to anticipate a little, by 
this erroneous means, acquired an idea very near 
the truth. He thought that Marjorie Ellison was 
being kidnapped against her will, and made it the 
subject of much meditation. His nervous ailment 
prevented him from dashing after her. 

Marjorie fortunately knew nothing of all this, 
for she was proud to the core, and she would rather 
have died than let any one but Lucille, of necessity 
in on it, know anything but that she was spending 
the most delightful and willing of honeymoons. 

So when they found a little up-state town with 
a tavern of exceeding age and stiffness, and alighted 
in search of luncheon, the landlord and landlady 
thought just what Marjorie wanted them to think; 
that all was well and very recent. 

She sank into one of the enormous walnut chairs, 
covered with immaculate and flaring tidies which 
reminded her of Cousin Anna and stuck into the 
back of her neck, and viewed the prospect with 


I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 73 

pleasure. For the moment she almost forgot Francis, 
and the problem of managing just the proper dis- 
tance from him. There was a stuffed fish, glassy-eyed 
and with cotton showing from parts of him, over 
the counter. There were bills of forgotten railroads 
framed and hung in different places. There was a 
crayon portrait of a graduated row of children 
from the Seventies hung over the fireplace, four 
of them, on the order of another picture, framed 
and hanging in another part of the room, and called 
“A Yard of Kittens.” Marjorie wondered with 
pleasure why they hadn’t added enough children 
to bring it up to a yard, and balanced things prop- 
erly. The fireplace itself was bricked up, all except 
a small place where a Franklin stove sat, with im- 
mortelles sticking out of its top as if they aimed 
at being fuel. Marjorie had seen immortelles in 
fireplaces before, but in a Franklin they were new 
to her. She made up her mind to find out about 
it before she was through. 

“ Why — why, I’m not worrying about being car- 
ried off by Francis! ” she remembered suddenly. 
She had been quite forgetful of him, and of anything 
but the funny, old-fashioned place she was in. She 


74 I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 

lay back further in the walnut chair, quite sleepily. 

“ Would you like to go upstairs now, ma’am? ” 
the landlord said. She looked around for Francis, 
but he was nowhere to be seen. She picked up the 
handkerchief which had slipped from her lap, cast 
a regretful look at the yard of kittens, and followed 
him. 

“ Here it is, ma’am,” said the landlord, and set 
the suitcase he had been carrying down inside the 
door. She shut the door after her, and made for 
the mirror. Then she said “ Oh ! ” in a surprised 
voice, because Francis was standing before it, brush- 
ing his hair much harder than such straight black 
hair needed to be brushed. 

He seemed as much surprised as she. 

Good heavens, I beg your pardon, Marjorie! ” 
he said. “ This isn’t your room. Yours is the next 
one.” 

“ I beg your pardon, then,” said Marjorie, with 
a certain iciness. 

“ You can have this one if you like it better. 
They’re next door to each other. You know ” — 
Francis colored — “we have to seem more or less 
friendly. Really I didn’t know ” 


rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 75 

He was moving away into the other room as he 
spoke, having laid down his brush on her bureau 
as if he had no business with it at all. 

“ This isn’t my brush,” she said, standing at the 
connecting door and holding it out at arm’s length. 

No,” said Francis. “ I didn’t know I’d left it. 
Thank you.” 

He took it from her, and went into his own room. 
She pushed the door to between them, and went 
slowly back and sat down on the bed. A quite 
new idea had just come to her. 

Francis wasn’t a relentless Juggernaut, or a 
tyrant, or a cave-man, or anything like that really. 
That is, he probably did have moments of being 
all of them. But besides that — it was a totally new 
idea — he was a human being like herself. Some- 
times things embarrassed him; sometimes they were 
hard for him; he didn’t always know what to do 
next. 

She had never had any brothers, and not very 
much to do with men until she got old enough for 
them to make love to her. The result was that 
it had never occurred to her particularly that men 
were people. They were just — men. That is, they 


76 rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 

were people you had nothing in common with except 
the fact that you did what they said if they were 
fathers, or married them when the time came, if 
they weren^t. But she had actually felt sorry for 
Francis; not sorry, in a vague, rather pitying way 
because she didn’t love him — but sorry for him as 
if he had been Lucille, when he was so embarrassed 
that he walked off forgetting his own brush. She 
smiled a little at the remembrance. She really began 
to feel that he was a friend. 

So when he tapped at her outside door presently 
and told her that luncheon was ready, and that they 
had better go down and eat it, instead of the severity 
for which Francis had braced himself, she smiled 
at him in a very friendly fashion, and they went 
down together, admiring the wallpaper intensely on 
their way, for it consisted of fat scarlet birds sitting 
on concentric circles, and except for its age was 
almost exactly like some that Lucille and Marjorie 
hadn’t bought because it was two dollars a yard. 

Luncheon proved to be dinner, but they were 
none the less glad of it for that. And instead of 
freezing every time the landlord was tactlessly emo- 
tional, Marjorie found that she could be amused 


rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 77 

at it, and that her being amused helped Francis to 
be amused. 

She always looked back tenderly to that yard 
of kittens, and to those other many yards of im- 
possible and scarlet birds. They gave her the first 
chance at carrying through her wild flight with 
Francis decently and without too much discomfort. 

The rest of the trip to Canada was easier and 
easier. Once admitting that Francis and she were 
friends — and you can’t spend three days traveling 
with anybody without being a friend or an enemy— 
she had a nice enough time. She kept sternly out 
of her mind the recollection that he was in love 
with her. When she thought of that she couldn’t 
like him very much. But then she didn’t have to 
think of it. 

“ Here we are,” said Francis superfluously as 
they stopped at the door of a big house that was 
neither a log cabin nor a regular house. 

Marjorie gave a sigh of contentment. 

“ I admit I’m glad to get here,” she said. 

She slipped out of the car in the sunset, and 
stood drooping a minute, waiting for her bag to be 
lifted down. She was beginning to feel tired. She 


78 rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 

was lonely, too. She missed everything acutely and 
all at once — New York, the little apartment, Lucille, 
being free from Francis — even the black kitten 
seemed to her something that she could not live 
one moment longer without. She turned and looked 
at Francis, trim and alert as ever, just steering the 
car around the side of the house, and found her- 
self hating him for the moment. He was so at 
home here. And she hadn’t even carfare to run 
away if she wanted to! 

“Well, now, you poor lamb! ” said somebody’s 
rich, motherly voice with a broad Irish brogue. 
“ You’re tired enough to die, and no wonder. Come 
along with me, darlin’.” 

She looked up with a feeling of comfort into the 
face of a black-haired, middle-aged Irishwoman, 
ample and beaming. 

“ I’m Mrs. O’Mara, an’ I know yer husband 
well. I kep’ house for him an’ the other young 
gintlemen when they were workin’ up here before 
the fightin’ began. So he got me to come an’ stay 
wid the two of ye, me an’ Peggy. An’ I don’t deny 
I’m glad to see ye, for there does be a ghost in this 
house! ” 


rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 79 

The ending was so unexpected and matter-of-fact 
that Marjorie forgot to feel lost and estranged, and 
even managed to laugh. Even a ghost sounded 
rather pleasant and friendly, and it was good to 
see a woman ^s face. Who or what Peggy might be 
she did not know or care. Mrs. O’Mara picked up 
the suitcase with one strong arm, and, putting the 
other round Marjorie in a motherly way, half led her 
into the house. 

Ye’ll excuse me familiarity, but it’s plain to 
see ye’re dead. Miss — ma’am, I mean. Come yer 
ways in to the fire.” 

Marjorie had been feeling that life would be too 
hard to bear if she had to climb any stairs now; 
so it was very gladly that she let Mrs. O’Mara 
establish her in a rude chaise-longue sort of thing, 
facing a huge fire in a roughly built fireplace. The 
housekeeper bent over her, loosening knots and 
taking off wraps in a very comforting way. Then 
she surrounded her with pillows — not too many, or 
too much in her way — and slipped from the room 
to return in a moment with tea. 

Marjorie drank it eagerly, and was revived by 
it enough to look around and see the place where 


So I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 

she was to dwell. It looked very attractive, though 

it was not in the least like anything she had ever 

seen. 

Where she lay she stared straight into a fire of 
great logs that crackled and burned comfortingly. 
The mantel over it was roughly made of wood, and 
its only adornment was a pipe at one side, stand- 
ing up on its end in some mysterious manner, and 
a pile of Government reports at the other. The 
walls were plastered and left so. Here and there 
were tacked photographs and snapshots, and along 
one wall — she had to screw her neck to see it — 
some one had fastened up countless sheets from 
a Sunday supplement — war photographs entirely. 
She wondered who had done it, because what she 
had seen of returned soldiers had shown her that 
the last thing they wanted to see or hear about 
was the war. 

There were couches around the walls, the other 
chairs were lounging chairs also. There was fish- 
ing-tackle in profusion, and a battered phonograph 
on a table. It looked as if men had made them- 
selves comfortable there, without thinking much 
about looks. The only thing against this was one 


I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 8r 

small frilled chair. It was a most absurd chair^ 
rustic to begin with, with a pink cushion covered 
with white net and ruffled, and pink ribbons anchor- 
ing another pink and net cushion at its back. Mrs. 
O’Mara, hovering hospitably, saw Marjorie eying 
it, and beamed proudly. 

“ That’s Peggy’s chair,” she said. “ Peggy’s me 
little daughter.” 

“ Oh, that’s nice,” said Marjorie. How old is 
she? ” 

“ Just a young thing,” said Mrs. O’Mara. She’ll 
be in in a minute.” 

Marjorie leaned back again, her tea consumed, 
and rested. She was not particularly interested 
in Peggy, because she was not very used to chil- 
dren. She liked special ones sometimes, but as a 
rule she did not quite know what to do with them. 
After a few sentences exchanged, and an embar- 
rassed embrace in which the children stiffened them- 
selves, children and Marjorie were apt to melt apart. 
She hoped Peggy wouldn’t be the kind that climbed 
on you and kicked you. 

A wild clattering of feet aroused her from these 
half -drowsy meditations. 


82 rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 

“Here’s Francis, mother! Here’s Francis!” 
called a joyous young voice, and Marjorie turned to 
see Francis, his eyes sparkling and his whole face 
lighted up, dashing into the room with an arm 
around one of the most beautiful girls she had ever 
seen, a tall, vivid creature who might have been 
any age from seventeen to twenty, and who brought 
into the room an atmosphere of excitement and 
gaiety like a wind. 

“And here’s Peggy! ” said Francis gaily, pausing 
in his dash only when he reached Marjorie’s side. 
“ She’s all grown up since I went away, and isn’t 
she the dear of the world? ” 

“Oh, but so’s your wife, Francis! ” said Peggy 
naively, slipping her arm from around his shoulder 
and dropping on her knees beside Marjorie. “ You 
don’t mind if I kiss you, do you, please? And must 
I call her Mrs. Ellison, Francis? ” 

“ Peggy, child, where’s your manners? ” said her 
mother from the background reprovingly, but with 
an obvious note of pride in her voice. 

“Where they always were,” said Peggy boldly, 
laughing, and staying where she was. 

She was tall and full-formed, with thick black 


I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 83 

hair like her mother’s, not fluffy and waving like 
Marjorie’s, but curling tight in rings wherever it 
had the chance. Her eyes were black and her cheeks 
and lips a deep permanent red. She looked the 
picture of health and strength, and Marjorie felt 
like a toy beside her — fragile to the breaking-point. 
She seemed much better educated than her mother, 
and evidently on a footing of perfect equality and 
affection with Francis. 

Marjorie was drawn to her, for the girl had 
vitality and charm; but she found herself wonder- 
ing why Francis had never told her about this 
Peggy, and why he had never thought of marrying 
her. 

“ You wouldn’t think this young wretch was only 
sixteen, would you? ” said Francis, answering her 
silent question. Look at her — long dresses 
and hair done up, and beaux, I hear, in all direc- 
tions! ” 

Of course. If Peggy had been scarcely past four- 
teen when Francis saw her last, he couldn’t have 
considered marrying her. Marjorie tried to think 
that she wished he had, but found that she did not 
like to cease owning anything that she had ever 


84 I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 

possessed, even such a belonging as Francis Ellison. 

That’s very nice,” she said inadequately, smil- 
ing at Peggy in as friendly a manner as so tired a 
person could manage. ^ I’m glad I shall have 
Peggy to be friends with while I’m up here.” 

“ Oh, me dear, ye’ll be up here forever an’ the 
day after, be the looks of the job Mr. Francis has 
on his hands,” said Mrs. O’Mara. 

‘‘ No, I won’t,” she began to say hurriedly, and 
then stopped herself. She had no right to tell any 
one about her bargain with Francis. She didn’t 
want to, anyway. 

‘‘The poor child’s tired,” said Mrs. O’Mara, 
whom, in spite of her relation to Peggy, Marjorie 
was beginning to regard as a guardian angel. 

Come upstairs to yer room, me dear.” 

Marjorie rose, with Francis and Peggy hovering 
about her, carrying wraps and hats and suitcases; 
and Mrs. O’Mara led the way to a room on the 
floor above, reached by a stair suspiciously like a 
ladder. 

“Here ye’ll be comfortable,” said Mrs. O’Mara, 
“ and rest a little till we have supper. Peggy will 
get you anything you want.” 


rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 85 

But Marjorie declined Peggy. All she wanted 
was to rest a little longer. 

She flung herself on the softly mattressed cot 
in one corner of the room; and nearly went to 
sleep. 

She was awakened — it must have been quite 
sleep — by Francis, on the threshold. His eyes were 
blazing, and he was evidently angry at her to the 
last degree — angrier even than he had been that 
time in the city when he nearly threw the telephone 
at her. 

Is this the sort of person you are? he de- 
manded furiously. “Look at this telegram! 

Marjorie, frightened, rose from the couch with 
her heart beating like a triphammer. 

“ Let me see,” she asked. 

He handed the telegram to her with an effect of 
wanting to shake her. 

“ Am coming up to arrange with you about Mrs. 
Ellison,” it said. “ Know all.” 

It was signed by Logan. 

“ Good heavens! ” said Marjorie helplessly. 

“ Knows all! ” said Francis bitterly. “ And thaPs 
the sort of girl you are! ” 


CHAPTER V. 


Marjorie froze in consternation. She had forgot- 
ten to allow for Francis’s gusts of anger; indeed, 
there had been no need, for since his one flare-up 
over the telephone he had been perfectly gentle and 
courteous to her. 

She stared at him, amazed. 

But I didn’t do anything to make that hap- 
pen! ” she protested. I never dreamed — why, I’d 

have too much pride ” 

Pride! ” thundered Francis. “It’s plain cause 
and effect. You write to that pup in New York, 
and I give you the envelope and paper — help you 
straight through it, good heavens! — and you use 
my decency to appeal to him for help, after you’ve 
agreed to try it out and see it through! ” 

Marjorie stiffened with anger. 

“ I was going to try it out and see it through,” 
she countered with dignity. “ But if you treat me 
this way I see no reason why I should. Even this 


86 


rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 87 

housekeeper of yours would give me money to escape 
withJ^ 

Escape! You act as if you were in a melo- 
drama! ’’ said Francis angrily. ‘‘We made a bar- 
gain, that^s all there is to it; and the first chance 
you get, you smash it. I suppose that’s the way 
women act. ... I don’t know much about women, 
I admit.” 

“ You don’t know much about me,” said Mar- 
jorie icily, “ if you jump to conclusions like that 
about me. Whatever that Logan man knows he 
doesn’t know from me. Have you forgotten Lu- 
cille? ” 

“ Lucille wouldn’t began Francis, and 

stopped. 

“ And why wouldn’t she? Didn’t she tell me 
that I was a poor little pet, and that men could 
always take care of themselves and, then turn 
around and help you carry me away? And it was 
carrying me away — it was stealing me, as if I were 
one of those poor Sabine women in the history 
book.” 

They were fronting each other across the 
threshold all this time, Francis with his face rigid 


88 I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 

and pale with anger, his wife flushed and quiv- 
ering. 

I admit I hadn’t thought of that,” said Francis, 
referring presumably to Lucille’s possibilities as an 
informer, and not to Marjorie’s being a Sabine 
woman. 

Marjorie moved back wearily and sat on the bed. 

“And you were just getting to be such a nice 
friend,” she mourned. “ I was getting so I liked 
you. There never was anybody pleasanter than you 
while we were coming up from New York. Why, 
you weren’t like a person one was married to, at 
all! ” 

“ More like a friend nor a ’usband,” quoted 
Francis unexpectedly. 

Marjorie looked at him in surprise. Any one 
who could stop in the middle of a very fine quarrel 
to see the funny side of things that way wasn’t 
so bad, her mind remarked to itself before she 
could stop it. 

“ What do you mean? ” she asked, mitigating 
her wrath a little. 

“ Why, you know the story; the cockney woman 
who had a black eye, and when the settlement 


I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 89 

worker asked her if her husband had given it to 
her said, ^ Bless you, no, miss — ’e’s more like a 
friend nor a ’usband! 

‘‘ Oh,” said Marjorie, smiling a little. Then she 
remembered, her eyes falling on the yellow paper 
Francis still held. There was still much to be set- 
tled between them. 

“ But, as you were saying about Mr. Logan ” 

“ I was saying a lot I hadn’t any business to 
about Mr. Logan,” said Francis frankly. 

Then it’s all right? ” said Marjorie. “ At least 
as far as you’re concerned? ” 

He nodded. 

Well,” said she most unfairly, “ it isn’t, as far 
as I am. Francis, I don’t think we’d better think 
any more of ever trying to be married to each other. 
It’s too hard on the nervous system.” 

Francis colored deeply. 

What do you want to do? ” he demanded. 

Marjorie paused a minute before she answered. 
The truth was, she didn’t know. She had definitely 
given up her New York position. She liked it up 
here, very much indeed. She liked the O ’Maras 
and the house, and she was wild to get outdoors 


90 rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 

and explore the woods. Leaving Francis out of 
the question, she was freer than she had been for 
years. Altogether it was a bit hard to be entirely 
moved by lofty considerations. She wanted to stay; 
she knew that. 

Canada^s a nice place,” she began, dimpling a 
little and looking up at Francis from under her eye- 
lashes. 

Oh, then ” he began eagerly. 

‘^And I want to stay, for perfectly selfish rea- 
sons,” she went on serenely. ‘‘ But if my staying 
makes you think that there is any hope of — of 
eventualities — I think I’d better go. In other words, 
I like the idea of a vacation here. That’s all. If 
you are willing to have me as selfish as all that, 
why, it’s up to you. I think myself I’m a pig.” 

“ You will stay, but not with any idea of learn- 
ing to like me better — is that it? ” 

“ That’s it,” she said. “ And, as I said, I feel 
colossally selfish — a regular Hun or something.” 

“ That’s because you used the word ‘ colossal,’ ” 
he said absently. They did, a lot. All right, my 
dear. That’s fair enough. Yes, I’m willing.” 

“But no tempers, mind, and no expectations! ” 


rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 91 

said Marjorie firmly, making hay while the sun 
shone. 

“ No,” said Francis. He looked at her apprais- 
ingly. “ You know,” he remarked, “ the gamble 
isn’t all one way. It’s just possible that I may 
be as glad as you not to see the thing through when 
we’ve seen something of each other. I don’t feel 
that way now, but there’s no telling.” 

She sprang to her feet, angry as he had been. 
But he had turned, after he said that, and gone 
quietly downstairs. 

The idea was new to her, and correspondingly 
annoying. Francis — Francis, who had been spend- 
ing all his time since he got back trying to win her 
— Francis suggesting that he might tire of her! 
Why, people didn’t do such things! And if he ex- 
pected to tire of her what did he want her for at 
all? 

She sprang up and surveyed herself in the glass 
that hung against the rough wall, over a draped 
dressing-table which had apparently once been boxes. 
Yes, she did look tired and draggled. Her wild- 
rose color was nearly gone, and there were big 
circles under her eyes. And there was a smudge 


92 I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 

on her face that nobody had told her a thing about. 
And her hair was mussed too much to be becoming, 
even to her, who looked best with it tossed a little. 
And there was not a sign of water to wash in any- 
where, and the room had no furniture except the 
cot and the dressing-table 

Another knock stopped her here, and she turned 
to see young Peggy, immaculate and blooming, at 
the door. 

‘‘ I just came to bring you towels, and to see 
that everything was all right, and show you the way 
to the bathroom,” she said most opportunely. “ We 
have a bathtub, you know, even up here in the 
wilds! ” 

Marjorie forgot everything; home, husband, prob- 
lems, life in general — what were they all to the 
chance at a real bathtub? She followed Peggy 
down the hall as a kitten follows a friend with a 
bowl of milk. 

“O-o! a bathtub! ” she said rapturously. 

Peggy threw open a door where, among wooden 
floor and side-wall and ceiling and everything else 
of the most primitive, a real and most enticingly 
porcelain bathtub sat proudly awaiting guests. 


93 


rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 

“ It’ll not be so good as you’ve been used to,” 
she said with more suggestion of Irishry than Mar- 
jorie had yet heard, “ but I guess you’ll be glad 
of it.” 

“ Glad! ” said Marjorie. And she almost shut 
the door in Peggy’s face. 

She lingered over it and over the manicuring and 
hairdressing and everything else that she could 
linger over, and dressed herself in the best of her 
gowns, a sophisticated taupe satin with slippers and 
stockings to match. She’d show Francis what he 
was perhaps going to be willing to part with! So 
when Mrs. O’Mara’s stentorian voice called “ Sup- 
per! ” up the stair, she had not quite finished her- 
self off. The sophisticated Lucille had tucked in — 
it was a real tribute of affection — ^her own best 
rouge box; and Marjorie was on the point of adding 
the final touch to beauty, as the advertisement on 
the box said, when she heard the supper call. She 
was too genuinely hungry to stop. She raced down 
the stairs in a most unsophisticated manner, nearly 
falling over Francis and Peggy, who were also rac- 
ing for the dining-room. 

They caught her to them in a most unceremonious 


94 I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 

way, each with an arm around her, and sped her 
steps on. She found herself breathless and laughing, 
dropped into a big wooden chair with Francis fac- 
ing her and Peggy and her mother at the other two 
sides. It was a small table, wooden as to leg under 
its coarse white cloth; but, oh, the beauty of the 
sight to Marjorie! There were such things as pork 
and beans, and chops, and baked potatoes, and apple 
sauce, and various vegetables, and on another table 
— evidently a concession to manners — was to be seen 
a noble pudding with whipped cream thick above it. 

“ The food looks good, now, doesn’t it? ” beamed 
Mrs. O’Mara. “ I’ll bet ye’re hungry enough to 
eat the side o’ the house. Pass me yer plate to 
fill up, me dear.” 

Marjorie ate — she remembered it vaguely after- 
wards, in her sleep — a great deal of everything on 
the table. It did not seem possible, when she re- 
membered, also vaguely, all the things there had 
been; but the facts were against her. She finished 
with a large cup of coffee, which should have kept 
Iier awake till midnight; and lay back smiling drow- 
sily in her chair. 

The last thing she remembered was somebody 


I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 95 

picking her up like a small baby and carrying her 
out of the dining-room and up the stairs to her own 
bed, and laying her down on it; and a heavy tread 
behind her carrier, which must have been Mrs. 
O’Mara’s, for a rich voice that belonged to it had 
said, Shure it’s a lovely sight, yer carryin’ her 
around like a child. It’s the lovely pair yez make, 
Mr. Francis! ” And then she remembered a tight- 
ening of arms around her for an instant, before she 
was laid carefully on her own cot and left alone. 

Mrs. O’Mara undressed her and put her to bed, 
she told her next morning; but Marjorie remem- 
bered nothing at all of that. All she knew was 
that the lady’s voice, raised to say that it was time 
to get up, wakened her about eight next day. 

It is always harder to face any situation in the 
morning. And theoretically Marjorie’s situation 
was a great deal to face. Here she was alone, pen- 
niless, at the mercy of a determined young man 
and his devoted myrmidons — whatever myrmidons 
were. Marjorie had always heard of them in con- 
nections like these, and rather liked the name. Mr. 
Logan was imminent at any moment, and a great 
deal of disagreeableness might be looked for when 


96 I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 

he turned up and had it out with Francis. Alto- 
gether the Sabine lady felt that she ought to be in 
a state of panic terror. But she had slept well, — r 
it was an excellent cot — the air was heavenly brac- 
ing, Mrs. O’Mara was a joy to think of, with her 
brogue and her affectionate nature, and altogether 
Marjorie Ellison found herself wondering hungrily 
what there would be for breakfast, and dressing in 
a hurry so that she could go down and eat it. 

Peggy, rosy and exuberant, rushed at her and 
kissed her when she got to the foot of the stairs. 

Oh, isn’t it lovely to think you’re here, and I’ve 
got somebody to have fun with, and Francis has 
to be out a lot of the time? Do you like to dance? 
There’s a French-Canadian family down the road, 
two girls and three boys, and seven or eight other 
men out working with Francis, and under him, and 
if you only say you like to dance I’ll telephone 
them to-night. Mother said I was too young to 
dance — and me three years learning at the convent! 
— but with you here sure she can’t say a word. 
Oh, do say you’ll have a little dance to-night! 
Francis dances, too, if you haven’t stopped it in 
him.” 


I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 97 

She stopped for a minute to take breath, and 
Marjorie clapped her hands. 

“I love to dance! Do have them up! Never 
mind whether Francis likes it or not! 

“ Sure you have to mind what your own wedded 
husband likes, said the Irish girl, shocked a little. 
“ But unless he’s been more sobered than’s likely 
by the big war, he’ll be as crazy over it all as we are. 
There’s a dozen grand dance records on the phono- 
graph, and sure a bit of rosin on the floor and it’ll 
be as fine as silk. Let’s try them now.” 

She made for the phonograph and had a dance- 
record on it before Marjorie could answer, and in 
another minute had picked the smaller girl up and 
was dancing over the rough floor with her. And 
so Francis, coming in a little apprehensively, found 
them flushed and laughing, and whirling wildly 
around to the music of a record played much too 
fast. Peggy, in an effort to show off heavily before 
Francis, came a cropper over a stool at his feet, 
pulling Marjorie down in her fall; both of them 
laughing like children as they fell, so that they 
could scarcely disentangle themselves, and had to be 
unknotted by Francis. 


98 I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 

“ Come on to breakfast now, you young wild ani- 
mals,” said he, his thin, dark face sparkling all 
over with laughter as Marjorie had never seen it. 

“ I’m killed entirely,” said Peggy. I have to 
be taken.” 

She made herself as limp and heavy as possible, 
and it ended in a free-for-all scuffle which was 
finally shepherded into the dining-room by Mrs. 
O’Mara, who was laughing so herself that she had 
to stop and catch her breath. 

So there was little time to think of one’s sad lot 
at breakfast, either. And Peggy was so keen on 
the dance proposition that it took all breakfast time 
to discuss it. 

“ I’m taking the motor-cycle over to the clearing, 
and I don’t think I’ll be back till night,” said Fran- 
cis unexpectedly when breakfast was over. 

Peggy made a loud outcry. 

“ Is this your idea of a honeymoon? Well, when 
my time comes may I have a kinder man than you ! 
And poor Marjorie sitting home darning your socks, 
I suppose I ” 

No. Not at all. I have to go over first to take 
some things. When I come back I’ll take her, too. 


I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 9 

if she’d like to go. Think you’d enjoy it, Mar- 
jorie? ” 

What is it? ” she asked cautiously, not particu- 
larly willing to implicate herself. 

“ Well, it’s a little cabin — or two little cabins, 
rather, and a lean-to — several miles away. A mo- 
tor-cycle can go there by taking its life in its hands. 
It’s in the middle of a clearing, so to speak; but it’s 
also in the middle of a pretty thick patch of woods 
around the clearing. There’s a spring, and a kettle^ 
and we make open fires. There are provisions in 
the lean-to, locked up so the deer can’t get them — 
yes, deer like things to eat. We go there to stay 
when there’s such work to do that it isn’t convenient 
to come back and forth at night. There are lots 
of rabbits and birds, and once in a while a harmless 
little green snake — do you mind harmless snakes,, 
my dear? — comes and looks affectionately at you, 
finds you’re a human being, and goes away again 
rather disappointed. Once in a long while an old 
bear comes and sniffs through the cracks of the 
lean-to in hopes of lunch, and goes away again dis- 
consolately like the snake. But only once since I 
can remember. I tell you, Marjorie, I don’t ever 


oo 


rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 
remember having a better time than when I’d built 
a fire out there in an open spot near the trees, and 
just lay on the ground with my hands behind my 
head, all alone, and everything in the whole world 
so far away that there wasn’t a chance of its bother- 
ing me! Just trees and sky and wood-smoke and 
the ground underneath — there’s nothing like it in 
the world! ” 

He had flushed up with enthusiasm. Marjorie 
looked at him admiringly. This was a new Francis, 
one she had never met. She had not realized that 
any one could love that sort of thing — indeed, no 
one had ever told her that such things existed. Her 
life had been spent between Cousin Anna’s little 
prim house with a pavement in front of it and a 
pocket-handkerchief of lawn behind, and the tiny 
New York fiat she had occupied with Lucille. 
She had never really been out-of-doors in her 
life. 

Oh, please do take me! ” she cried. 

He seemed extremely pleased at her asking. 

“I can’t this first trip; the side-car will be full 
of junk that I have to get over there. But I would 
like to take you on my second trip, about noon 


I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE loi 

to-day. Or it may be later when I get back — it’s 
quite a distance.” 

“ That will be all right,” said Marjorie sedately. 
“ I’d like to rest a little this morning, anyway.” 

So Francis, with a light in his eyes, and whistling 
happily, fussed about for a while assembling a mys- 
terious collection of tools and curious bundles, and 
rode blithely off in the general direction of what 
looked like virgin forest. 

“ And now we’ll plan all about the dance,” said 
Peggy gaily. 

“You will not. Miss! You’ll plan how to help 
me clean the back cellar this beautiful sunny morn- 
ing that was just made for it,” said her mother 
sternly, appearing on the scene, and carrying off a 
protesting Peggy. 

Marjorie, left alone, addressed herself to resting 
up in preparation for the afternoon’s trip. There 
was a big hammock on the porch, and thither, 
wrapped in her heavy coat, she went to lie. She 
tried to think out some plans for her future life 
without Francis; but the plans were hard to make. 
There were so many wild things to watch; even 
the clouds and sky seemed different up here. And 


102 


rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 
presently when Peggy, no more than healthfully ex- 
cited by her hard morning’s work on the cellar, 
came prancingly out to enjoy more of her guest’s 
society, she found her curled up, asleep, one hand 
under her cheek, looking about ten years old and 
very peaceful. 

Isn’t she the darling! ” she breathed to her 
mother. 

“ She is that! ” said Mrs. O’Mara heartily. But 
they’ve both got fine young tempers of their own, 
for all they’re so gay and friendly. Somebody’s 
going to learn who’s rulin’ the roost, when the first 
edge of the honeymoon’s off. And it’s in me mind 
that the under-dog won’t be Mr. Francis.” 

Oh, mother! How can you talk so horridly? ” 
remonstrated Peggy. “ As if they ever had any 
chance of quarreling! ” 

“ There’s none,” said Mrs. O’Mara wisely, “ but 
has the chancet of quarrelin’ when they’re man an’ 
wife. An’ why not? Sure it brightens life a bit! 
’Tis fine when it’s over, as the dentist said to me 
whin he pulled out the big tooth in me back jaw.” 

“ Well, I know Pm never going to quarrel,” said 
Peggy vehemently. 


rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 103 

“ Then ye’d be a reformed character itself, an’ 
why not start to curb yer temper now? ” said her 
mother. “ I can mind a certain day ” 

But Peggy engulfed her mother in a violent em- 
brace, holding her mouth shut as she did so, and 
as Peggy was even taller than Mrs. O’Mara and 
quite as strong, the ensuing struggle and laughter 
woke Marjorie. 

^‘Now, see that! An’ take shame to yerselfl ” 
said Mrs. O’Mara apologetically. ’Twas me angel 
girl here, Mrs. Ellison, explainin’ by fine arguments 
how peaceful-minded she is. Now let me away, 
Peggy, for there’s the meal to make.” 

Peggy, laughing as usual, sat down unceremoni- 
ously by Marjorie. 

“ I was just saying that I didn’t see why mar- 
ried people should quarrel,” she explained, “ and 
mother says that they all have to do some of it, 
just to keep life amusing. I think you and Francis 
get along like kittens in a basket.” 

And does she think we quarrel? ” inquired 
Marjorie sleepily, yet with suspicion. 

Peggy shook her head with indubitable honesty. 

No, she only says you will sooner or later. But 


104 rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 
that^s because she’s Irish, I think; you know Irish 
people do like a bit of a shindy once in awhile. I 
admit I don’t mind it myself. But you Americans 
born are quieter. When you quarrel you seem to 
take no pleasure whatever in it, for all I can see! ” 

Marjorie laughed irrepressibly. 

Oh, Peggy, I do love you! ” she said. “It’s 
true, I don’t like quarreling a bit. It always makes 
me unhappy. It’s my Puritan ancestry, I sup- 
pose.” 

“ Well, you can’t help your forebears,” said 
Peggy sagely. 

“ And now shall I call up the folks for the dance 
to-night? ” 

“Oh, yes, do! ” begged Marjorie, who had slept 
as much as she wanted to and felt ready for any- 
thing in the world. 

She lay on in the khaki hammock in a happy 
drowsiness. The wind and sunshine alone were 
enough to make her happy. And there was going 
to be a dance to-night, and she could wear a little 
pink dress she remembered . . . and pretty soon 
there would be luncheon, and after that she was 
going off on a gorgeous expedition with Francis, 


rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 105 

where there was a fire, and rabbits and maybe a 
nice but perfectly harmless little green snake that 
would look at her affectionately . . . but everybody 
looked at you affectionately, once you were mar- 
ried ... it was very warming and comforting. . . . 

She was asleep again before she knew it. It 
was only Francis’s quick step on the porch that 
woke her — Francis, very alert and flushed, and 
exceedingly hungry. 

“Yes, yes, Mr. Francis, the food’s been waitin’ 
you this long time,” said Mrs. O’Mara, evidently 
in answer to a soul-cry of Francis’s, for he had not 
had time to say anything aloud. “ Bring yer wife 
an’ come along an’ eat.” 

So they went in without further word spoken, 
and after all Marjorie found herself the possessor 
of as good an appetite as she’d had for breakfast. 

“ Be sure to get back in time to dress for the 
dance,” Peggy warned them as they started off in 
the motor-cycle. “ It’s to be a really fine dance, 
with the girls in muslin dresses, not brogans and 
shirtwaists! ” 

“ The girls? ” asked Marjorie of Francis won- 
deringly. 


io6 rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 

“ I think she means that the men aren’t to wear 
brogans, or the girls shirtwaists,” he explained, as 
they whizzed down what seemed invisible tracks in 
a trackless forest. “Smell the pines — aren’t they 
good? ” 

Majorie looked up, beaming. 

“Stunning! ” she said. “I don’t see how you 
ever wanted to come to New York, after you’d had 
this.” 

“ After a long time of this New York is pleasant 
again,” he said. “ But I hope you won’t tire of 
this, my dear.” 

“Oh, no! ” she said fervently. “I’m crazy to 
go on, and see the cabins you told me about. I 
can amuse myself there the whole afternoon, if 
you have other things you want to do.” 

“ You dear! ” said Francis. 

After that they were quiet, and rode on together, 
enjoying the glorious afternoon. 

“Here we are,” said Francis after about two 
hours on the motor-cycle. He slipped off and held 
the machine for her to get out. 

“ Oh,” said Marjorie, “ it’s like something out of 
a fairy-book! ” 


CHAPTER VI 


They had gone through what seemed to Marjorie’s 
city-bred eyes a dense forest, but which Francis had 
assured her was only a belt of woodland — quite 
negligible. And they had come out, now, on what 
Francis called a clearing. It was thick with under- 
brush, little trees, and saplings; while bloodroot 
flowered everywhere, and the gleam of thickly scat- 
tered red berries showed even as they rode quickly 
over the grass. In the center of things were the 
two cabins Francis had spoken of; one quite large 
— Francis seemed given to understatement — and the 
other of the conventional cabin size. 

“ The larger one is where my men stay,” he ex- 
plained. “Two of them are there now. That’s 
why you see a red shirt through the window. 
Pierre is probably leaving it there to dry. I’ll take 
you through if you like, but it’s just a rough sort 
of place. The lean-to is the cook-place. All that 
cabin has inside is bunks, and a table or two to 


107 


io8 rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 

play cards on, as far as I remember. The other 

cabin ” 

He stopped short, and turned away, pretending 
to fuss over his motor-cycle, which he had already 
laid down tenderly in just the right spot and the 
right position. Marjorie, eager and swift, sprang 
close to him like a squirrel. She did not look unlike 
one for the moment, wrapped in the thick brown 
coat with its furry collar. 

“ The other one I Oh, show me that, and tell me 
all about it! ” she demanded ardently. 

The other one ” he said. “ Well — it’s noth- 

ing. That’s where I wanted to bring you to stay 
— before I knew there wasn’t anything to it but — 
this. I — fixed it up for — us.” 

\ In spite of all the things she had against Francis, 
Marjorie felt for the moment as if there was some- 
thing hurting her throat. She was sorry for him, 
not in a general, pitying way, but the close way that 
hurts; as if he was her little boy, and something had 
hurt him, and she couldn’t do anything about it. 

“I’m—I’m sorry,” she faltered, not looking at 
him. 

He had evidently expected her to be angry — 


rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 109 
could she have been angry so much as all that? — 
for he looked up with a relieved air. 

I thought you might like to go in there and 
rest while I went over to where the work is being 
done/’ he said matter-of-factly. “ I can’t get back 
to you or to the Lodge till just in time for Peggy’s 
dance. But you’ll find things in the little cabin to 
amuse you, perhaps,” 

Oh, I don’t need things in the cabin to amuse 
me!” said Marjorie radiantly. “There’s enough 
outside of it to keep me amused for a whole after- 
noon! But I do want to see in.” 

He took a key out of his pocket, and together 
they crossed the clearing to where the little cabin 
stood, its rustic porch thick with vines. Francis 
stood very still for a moment before he bent and 
put the key into the padlock, and Marjorie saw 
with another tug at her heart that his face was 
white, and held tense. She felt awed. Had it 
meant so much to him, then? 

She followed him in, subdued and yet somehow 
excited. He moved from her side with a sort of 
push, and flung open the little casement windows. 
The scented gloom, heavy with the aromatic odors 


no rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 
of life-everlasting and sweet fern, gave place to the 
fresh keen wind with new pine-scents in it, and to 
the dappled sunshine. 

“ Oh, how lovely! said Marjorie. “ Oh, Fran- 
cis! Do you know what this place is? It’s the 
place I’ve always planned I’d make for myself, 
way off in the woods somewhere, when I had enough 
money. Only I thought I’d never really see it, you 
know. . . . And here it is! ” 

He only said Is it? ” in a sort of suppressed 
way; but she said no more. She only stood and 
looked about her. 

There was a broad window-seat under the case- 
ment windows he had just thrown open. It was 
cushioned in leaf-brown. A book lay on it, which 
Marjorie came close to and looked at curiously. 

‘‘Oh — my own pet ‘ Wind in the Willows ! ’ ” she 
said delightedly. “How queer! ” 

“ No, not queer,” said Francis quietly, from 
where he was unlocking an inner door. 

So Marjorie said no more. She laid the book 
down a little shyly and investigated further. The 
walls were of stained wood, but apparently there 
were two thicknesses, with something between to 


rVE MARRIED MARJORIE iii 
keep the heat and cold out, for she could see a 
depth of some inches at the door. There was a 
perfectly useless and adorable and absurd balcony 
over the entrance, and a sort of mezzanine and a 
stair by which you could get to it; something like 
what a child would plan in its ideas of the kind 
of house it wanted. There was *a door at the far- 
ther end leading into another room, and crossing 
the wooden floor, with its brown fiber rug, Marjorie 
opened it and entered a little back part where were 
packed away most surprisingly a kitchen, a bath- 
room, and a bedroom. 

Why, it isn’t a cabin — it’s a bungalow! ” she 
said, surprised. ‘‘And what darling furniture! ” 

The furniture was all in keeping, perfectly simple 
and straight-built, of brown-stained wood. There 
was a long chair at one side of the window-seat, 
with a stool beside it, and a magazine thrown down 
on the stool. Everything looked as if it had just 
been lived in, and by some one very much like 
Marjorie. 

“ When did you do all this? ” she asked curiously. 

“I didn’t know you’d had any time for ages 
and ages. Was it ” 


II2 


I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 
^‘Was it for some other girl,” was hovering on 
her lips. But she did not ask the question. As a 
matter of fact, she didn’t want to hear the answer 
if it was affirmative. “You don’t remember,” he 
said quietly. “ I put in some time training recruits 
not far from here. No, of course you don’t remem- 
ber, because I never told you. It was in between 
my first seeing you, and the other time when I was 
going around with you and Billy and Lucille. After 
I saw you that first time, when I had to come back 
here, near as it was to my old haunts, — well, I didn’t 
know, of course, whether I was ever going to marry 
you or not. But — there was the cabin, my property, 
and I had time off occasionally and nothing to do 
with it. So — well, it was for the you I thought might 
possibly be. It made you realer, don’t you see? ” 
Marjorie sank down as he finished, on the broad, 
soft window-seat; and began to cry uncontrollably. 

“Oh — oh — it seems so pitiful!” he made out 
that she was saying finally. “ I — I’m so sorry! ” 
Francis laughed gallantly. 

“Oh, you needn’t be sorry!” he said, smiling at 
her, though with an obvious effort. “ I had a mighty 
good time doing it, my dear. Why, the things you 


rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 113 

said, and the way you acted while I was doing 
it for you — youVe no idea how nice they were. 
You sat just ” 

“Oh, that was why the book was on the window- 
seat, and the other things 

“ That was why,” nodded Francis. 

“ And the stool close up to the lounge-chair ” 

He nodded. 

“ You lay there and I sat by you on the stool,” 
he said. “ And you whispered the most wonderful 
things to me ” 

“ I didn’t! ” said Marjorie, flushing suddenly. 
“You know perfectly well all the time that was 
going on I — the i;eal Me — was being a filing- 
clerk in New York, and running around with Lu- 
cille, and being bored with fussy people in the office, 
and hunting up letters for employers and hoping 
they wouldn’t discover how much longer it took me 
to find them than it did really intelligent people ” 

“ No,’^ said Francis, suddenly dejected, “ you 
didn’t. But — it was a nice dream. And I think, 
considering all that’s come and gone, you needn’t 
begrudge it to me.” 

“ I don’t,” said Marjorie embarrassedly. “ I — I 


1 14 rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 
only wish you wouldn’t talk about it, because it 
partly makes me feel as if my feelings were hurt, 
and partly makes me feel terribly self-conscious.” 

“ Then perhaps it was you, a little,” said Francis 
quietly. 

Marjorie moved away from him, and went into 
the kitchen again, with her head held high to hide 
the fact that her cheeks were burning. He hadn’t 
any right to do that to her. Why, any amount of 
men might be making desperate love to dream- 
Marjories — Mr. Logan, for instance, — only his love- 
making would probably be exceedingly full of quo- 
tations, and rather slow and involved. 

She turned, dimpling over her shoulder at Fran- 
cis, who had been standing in rather a dream, where 
she had left him. 

“ Francis! Do you suppose any other men are 
doing that? ” she asked mischievously. ‘‘ Supposing 
our good friend Mr. Logan, for instance, has in- 
stalled me in a carved renaissance chair in his apart- 
ment, and is saying nice things to me ” 

“ Marjorie! ” 

“ Well, you see! ” said Marjorie. “ It isn’t a good 
precedent.” 


I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 115 

“ Well, I’m your husband,” muttered Francis 
quite illogically. 

Oh, this has gone far enough,” said Marjorie 
with determination. And she went back to the 
kitchen. 

I’ll leave you here, if that’s the case,” said 
Francis in a friendly enough way. I have to go 
over to the other cabin and see how things are 
and then out to where some work is going on. Can 
you find amusement here for awhile? ” 

“ Oh, yes,” said Marjorie. She felt a little tired, 
after all; and a little desirous of getting away from 
Francis. 

“ Well, if you’re hungry, I think there are some 
things in the kitchen; and the stove is filled, and 
there are matches,” he said in a matter-of-fact way. 
She wondered if he intended her to get herself a 
large and portentous meal. She did not feel at all 
hungry. 

“ If you’ll tell me when you think you’ll be back 
for me I’ll have a little lunch ready for you before 
we go,” she was inspired to say. 

“ That’s fine,” said Francis with the gratitude 
which any mention of food always inspires in a man. 


Ii6 rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 
Don^t overwork yourself, though. You must be 
tired yet from your trip.” 

She smiled and shook her head. She went over 
to the door with him, and watched him as he went 
away, as bonny and loving a wife to all appearances 
as any man need ask for. Pierre, who had been 
dwelling in the cabin along with his red shirt, for 
the purpose of doing a much-needed housecleaning 
for himself and his mates, looked out at them with 
an emotional French eye. 

“ By gar, it^s tarn nice be married ! ” he sighed, 
for his last wife had been dead long enough to 
have blotted out in his amiable mind the recollec- 
tion of her tongue, and he was thinking over the 
acquirement of another one. 

Meanwhile Marjorie went back to the cabin that 
had been built around the dream of her, picked 
up The Wind in the Willows,” and tried to read. 
But it was difficult. Life, indeed, was difficult — 
but interesting, in spite of everything. Francis was 
nice in places, after all, if only he wouldn’t have 
those terrifying times of being too much in earnest, 
and over her. It was embarrassing, as she had said. 
She rose up and walked through the place again. 


I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 117 

It was so dainty and so friendly and so clean, so 
everything that she had always wanted — ^how had 
Francis known so much about what she liked? 

She curled down on the window-seat, tired of 
thinking, and finally slept again. It was the change 
to the crisp Canada air that made her sleep so much 
of the time. 

She sprang up in a little while conscious that there 
was something on her mind to do. Then she re- 
membered. She had promised to get luncheon — 
or afternoon tea — or a snack — for Francis before 
he went. She felt as if she could eat something 
herself. 

“ At this rate,” she told herself, I’ll be as fat 
as a pig! ” 

She thought, as she moved about, to look down 
at the little wrist-watch that had been one of 
Francis’s ante-bellum gifts to her. And it was half- 
past five o’clock. Then it came to her that by the 
time she had something cooked and they had made 
the distance back to the lodge it would be time 
for the dance, and therefore that this meal would 
have to be supper at least. It was more fun than 
cooking in the kitchenette of the apartment, be- 


ii8 rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 
cause there was elbow-room. Marjorie^s housewifely 
soul had always secretly chafed under having to 
prepare food in a kitchen that only half of you 
could be in at a time. 

There was a trusty kerosene stove here, and a 
generous white-painted cupboard full of stores and 
of dishes. She had another threatening of emotion 
for a minute when she saw that the dishes were 
some yellow Dutch ones that she remembered ad- 
miring. But she decided that it was no time to feel 
pity — or indeed any emotion that would interfere 
with meal-getting — and continued prospecting for 
stores. Condensed milk, flour, baking-powder, and 
a hermetically-sealed pail of lard suggested biscuits, 
if she hurried; cocoa and tins of bacon and pre- 
served fruit and potatoes offered at least enough 
food to keep life alive, if Francis would only stay 
away the half-hour extra that he might. 

Heaven was kind, and he did. The biscuits and 
potatoes were baked, the fruit was opened and on 
the little brown table with the yellow dishes, and 
the bacon was just frizzling curlily in the pan when 
Francis walked into the kitchen. 

If it seemed pleasantly domestic to him he was 


rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 119 
wise enough not to say so. He only stated in an 
unemotional manner that there were eggs put down 
in water-glass in the entry back; and as this con- 
veyed nothing to Marjorie he went and got some 
and fried them, and they had supper together. 

You^re a bully good cook,’^ he told her, and 
she smiled happily. Anybody could tell you that 
much, and it meant nothing. Sometimes dealing 
with Francis reminded her of a Frank Stockton 
fairy-tale in her childhood, where some monarch 
or other went out walking with a Sphinx, and found 
himself obliged to reply “ Give it up ! ” to every 
remark of the lady^s, in order not to be eaten. 

“ We won’t have time to clear up much,” was his 
next remark, looking pensively at a taBle from which 
they had swept everything but one biscuit and a 
lonely little baked potato which had what Mar- 
jorie termed “ flaws,” and they had had to avoid. 

But then, I suppose you might say there wasn’t 
much to clear. We’ll stack these dishes and let 
Pierre or somebody wash ’em. Us for the dance.” 

They piled the yellow dishes in a gleeful hurry, 
and Francis went out and disposed of the scraps 
and did mysterious things to the kerosene stove. 


120 rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 

They were whizzing back the way they had come 

before Marjorie had more than caught her breath. 

“ We’ll be a little late, if you have to do any- 
thing in the dressing line. I have to shave,” said 
Francis. 

Marjorie, who really wasn’t used to men, colored' 
a little at this marital remark, and then said that 
she supposed that it must have been hard not to 
do it in the trenches. 

Oh, that was only the poilus,” said Francis, and 
went on into a flood of details about keeping the 
men neat for the sake of their morale. It was 
interesting; but Marjorie thought afterward that 
perhaps it was because anything would have been 
while she was whirring along through the darken- 
ing woods in the keen, sharp-scented air. She loved 
it more and more, the woods and the atmosphere, 
and the memory of the little cabin. She promised 
herself that she would try some day to find the 
place by herself. Maybe she could borrow a horse 
or a bicycle or some means of locomotion and go 
seeking it in the forest. 

“ Now hurry! ” admonished Francis as he landed 
her neatly by the veranda. Don’t let them stop 


I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 12 1 

you for anything to eat, as Mother O’Mara will 
want to.” 

So she scurried up to her room, not even waiting 
to hear the voice of temptation, and began hunting 
her belongings through for something. It was fool- 
ish, but she was more excited over the thought of 
this rough, impromptu backwoods dance than she 
ever had been in the city by real dances, or out with 
Cousin Anna at the carefully planned subscription 
dances where you knew just who was coming and 
just what they were going to wear. 

Finally she gave up her efforts at decision, and 
went out to find Peggy. Her room, she knew, was 
on the third floor. 

“Come in! ” said Peggy’s joyous voice. Mar- 
jorie entered, and found Peggy in the throes of inde- 
cision herself. 

“You’re just what I wanted to see! ” said she. 
“ Would you wear this green silk that’s grand and 
low, but a bit short for the last styles, or this muslin 
that I graduated in, and it’s as long as the 
moral law, and I slashed out the neck — but a bit 
plain? ” 

“ Why, that’s just what I came to ask you,” said 


122 I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 

Marjorie. What kind of clothes do you wear for 
dances like these? ” 

Well, the grander the better, to-night, as I was 
telling everybody over the telephone. Mrs. Schnei- 
der, now, the priesVs housekeeper, she has a red 
satin that she’ll be sure to wear, — and the saints 
keep her from wearing her pink satin slippers with 
it, but I don’t think they can. It would be a strong 
saint at the least,” said Peggy thoughtfully. “ I’d 
better be in my green.” 

“ Then I can wear ” said Marjorie, and 

stopped to consider. She had one frock that was 
very gorgeous, and she decided to wear it. It would 
certainly seem meek contrasted with Mrs. Schnei- 
der’s red satin. 

Come on, and I’ll bring this, and we can hook 
each other up,” Peggy proposed ardently, and fol- 
lowed her down in a kimono. 

So they hooked each other up, except where there 
were snappers, and admired each other exceed- 
ingly. Marjorie’s frock was a yellow one that Lu- 
cille had hounded her into buying, and she looked 
as vivid in it as a firefly. 

Francis had been given orders to wear his uni- 


rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 123 
form, which he was doing. He looked very natural 
that way to Marjorie; there were others of the 
men in uniform as well. There were perhaps twenty 
people already arrived when the girls came down- 
stairs, seven or eight girls and twelve or fourteen 
men. And Marjorie discovered that young persons 
in the backwoods believed in dressing up to their 
opportunities. Some of the frocks were obviously 
home-made, but all were gorgeous, even in the case 
of one black-eyed habitant damsel who had con- 
structed a confection, copied accurately and cleverly 
from some advanced fashion-paper, out of cheese- 
cloth and paper muslin! 

One of the men was sacrificed to the phonograph, 
and for hours it never stopped going. Records had 
been brought by others of the men and girls, and 
Marjorie had never seen such gay and unwearied 
dancing. She was tossed and caught from one big 
backwoodsman to another, the dances being cut- 
in ” shamelessly, because the women were fewer 
than the men. They nearly all danced well, French 
or Yankee or Englishmen. There were a couple 
of young Englishmen whom she particularly liked, 
who had ridden twenty miles, she heard, to come 


124 I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 
and dance. And finally she found herself touched 
on the shoulder by her own husband, and dancing 
smoothly away with him. 

'‘This isn’t much like the last time and place 
where we danced,” he said, smiling down at her 
and then glancing at the big, bare room with its kero- 
sene lamps and bough-trimmed walls. " Do you re- 
member? ” 

She laughed and nodded. " Maxim’s, wasn’t it? 
But I like this best. There’s something in the air 
here that keeps you feeling so alive all the time, 
and so much like having fim. In spite of all our 
tragedies, and your very bad temper ” — she laughed 
up at him impertinently — " I’m enjoying myself as 
much as Peggy is, though I probably don’t look it.” 

" There isn’t so much of you to look it,” explained 
Francis. Their eyes both followed young Peggy, 
where, magnificent in her green gown and gold slip- 
pers, she was frankly flirting with a French-Cana- 
dian who was no match for her, but quite as frankly 
overcome by her charms. “ But what there is,” 
he added politely, " is very nice indeed.” 

They laughed at this like a couple of children, 
and moved on toward a less frequented part of the 


rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 125 

floor, for there was a big man in khaki, one of 
Francis’s men, who was coming dangerously near, 
and had in his eye a determination to cut in. Fran- 
cis and Marjorie moved downwards till they were 
almost opposite the door. And as they were danc- 
ing across the space before the door there was a 
polite knock on it. They stood still, still interlaced, 
as an unpartnered man lounging near it threw it 
open. And on the threshold, like a ghost from the 
past, stood Mr. Logan. In spite of his mysterious 
nervous ailment he had nerved himself to make the 
journey after Marjorie, and walked in, softly and 
slowly, indeed, and somewhat travel-soiled, but very 
much himself, and apparently determined on a res- 
cue. Marjorie stared at him in horror. Rescue 
was all right theoretically; but not in the middle 
of as good a party as this. And what could Francis 
do to her now? 

What he did was to release her with decision, 
and come forward with the courtesy he was quite 
capable of at any crisis, and welcome Logan to their 
home. 

You’ve caught us in the middle of a party,” 
he concluded cordially, but I don’t suppose you 


126 I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 
feel much like dancing. Perhaps after a little some- 
thing to eat and drink you’d like to rest a bit. Come 
speak to Mr. Logan, my dear,” he finished, with 
what Marjorie stigmatized as extreme impudence; 
and Marjorie, in her firefly draperies, came forward 
with as creditable a calm as her husband, and 
greeted Mr. Logan, after which Francis called Mrs. 
O’Mara to show him to a room where he could rest. 

‘‘ I came to talk to you ” began Mr. Logan 

as he was led hospitably away. 

“I’ll be at your service as soon as you’ve had 
a little rest and food,” said Francis in his most 
charming manner. 

He actually put his arm about Marjorie again 
and was going on with the dance, when the tele- 
phone rang. The woman nearest it answered it, 
and called Francis over excitedly. Marjorie, too 
proud to ask any questions, was nevertheless eaten 
up with curiosity, and finally edged near enough 
to hear above the phonograph. 

“You’ll be all right till to-morrow? Very well 
— I’ll be out then and see what to do.” 

“ What’s the matter? ” demanded Peggy, who had 
no pride to preserve. 


rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 127 

Francis smiled, but looked a little worried, too. 

Nothing very serious, but inconvenient. Pierre, 
the cook for the outfit, suddenly decided to leave 
to-day, and did. He said he thought it was time 
he got married again, and has gone in quest of a 
bride, I suppose. The deuce of it is, we’re so short- 
handed. Well, never mind ” 

“ If mother wasn’t so silly about the ghosts,” be- 
gan Peggy. 

“ Well, she is, if ye call it silly,” said Mrs. O’Mara 
from where she stood with her partner in all the 
glory of a maroon satin that fitted her as if she 
were an upholstered sofa. ‘^I’d no more go live 
in that clearin’ with the Wendigees, or whatever ’tis 
the Canucks talk about, than in Purgatory itself. 
Wendigees is Injun goblins,” she explained to her 
partner, “ and there’s worse nor them, too.” 

She crossed herself expertly, and in almost the 
same movement swept her partner, not of the 
tallest, away in a fox-trot. She fox-trotted very 
well. 

Marjorie went on dancing, and hoping that Mr. 
Logan would go to bed and to sleep, or have a fit 
of nerves that would incapacitate him from further 


128 I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 

interfering with her. But the hope was in vain, 
for Francis appeared from nowhere in about fifteen 
minutes, and beckoned her to follow him to where 
she knew Logan was waiting. 

The two men sat down gravely in the little wooden 
room where Logan had been shown. It was Francis 
who spoke first. 

Mr. Logan insists, Marjorie, that you appealed 
to him for rescue. He puts it to me, I must say, 
very reasonably, that no sensible man would travel 
all this way to bring back a girl unless she had asked 
him to. He says that you wrote him that you were 
being treated severely.” 

“I didn’t! I never did! ” exclaimed outraged 
Marjorie, springing up and standing before them. 

Show me my letter! ” 

Unfortunately,” said Mr. Logan wistfully, “ I 
destroyed it, because I have always found that the 
wisest thing to do with letters. But I am prepared 
to take my oath that you wrote me, asking me to 
help you. I am extremely sorry to find that you 
are in such a position as to — forgive me, Mr. Elli- 
son, but it seems rather like it — to be so dominated 
by this gentleman as not to even admit ” 


I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 129 

“ You see what it looks like/^ broke in Francis, 
turning to his wife furiously. “ Never ask me 
to believe you again. I don’t trust you — I never 
will trust you. Nobody will, if you keep on 
as you’ve begun. Go back with him, then 
— you’re not my slave, much as you may pre- 
tend it.” 

I won’t! ” said Marjorie spiritedly. I’ve had 
enough of this. I’ll stay here, if it takes ten years, 
till you admit that you’ve treated me horribly, and 
misjudged me. I’ve played fair. I’ve no way of 
proving it, against you two men, but I have! I’ll 
prove it by any test you like.” 

“ There’s only one way you can convince me that 
one word you’ve said since you came up here was 
the truth,” he told her, suddenly quiet and cold. 
“ If you stay, of your own free will, out there in 
the clearing; if you take over the work that Pierre 
fell down on this evening, and stay there looking 
after me and my men — I’ll believe you. There’s 
no fun to doing that, just work; it stands to reason 
that you wouldn’t do that for any reason unless 
to clear yourself. If you don’t want to do that, 
you may go home with this gentleman; indeed. 


130 rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 

I won’t let you do anything else. Take your 
choice. 

Marjorie looked at him for a moment as if she 
wanted to do something violent to him. Then she 
spoke. 


CHAPTER VII 


‘‘ I SEE what you mean,” she said. I wasn’t sport- 
ing in the first place — I wouldn’t live up to my bar- 
gain. That’s made you more apt to believe that I’ve 
been acting the same way ever since. You don’t 
think I can see anything through. Well — not par- 
ticularly for your sake — more for my own, I guess 
— I’m going to see this through, if I die doing it. 
I’ll stay — and take Pierre’s place, Francis.” 

Francis’s severe young face did not change at all. 

“ Very well,” he said. 

“ But you understand,” she went on, “ that I’m 
not doing this to win anything but my own self- 
respect. And at the end of the three months, of 
course, I shall go back to New York. And you’ll 
let me go, and see that I get free.” 

“ I wouldn’t do anything else for the world,” said 
Francis in the same unmoved voice. 

Very well, then — we understand each other.” 
She turned to Logan, who had sprung to his feet 


131 


132 rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 
and tried to interfere a couple of times while she 
talked. “ And please remember that this arrange- 
ment does not go beyond us three,” said said. “ I 
would prefer that no one else knew how matters 
stood.” 

Logan looked a little baffled. He was ten years 
older than either of them, but so many actual clash- 
ing things happening had never come his way be- 
fore. His ten years’ advantage had been spent 
writing stylistic essays, and such do not fit one for 
stepping down into the middle of a lot of primitive 
young emotions. He felt suddenly helpless before 
these passionate, unjust, emotional young people. 
He felt a little forlorn, too, as if the main currents 
of things had been sweeping them by while he stood 
carefully on the bank, trying not to get his feet 
wet. A very genuine emotion of pity for Marjorie 
had brought him up here, pity more mixed with 
something else than he had been willing to admit. 
It was the first thing he had done for a long, long 
time that was romantic and unconsidered and actual. 
And it appeared that, after all, he wasn’t needed. 
Concentration on the nuances of minor fifteenth- 
century poets had unfitted him for being swept on. 


rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 133 

as these had been, by the world-currents. They 
had married each other, pushed by the mating in- 
stinct in the air — the world’s insistence on marriage 
to balance the death that had swept it. Now they 
were struggling to find their balance against each 
other, to be decent, to be fair, to make themselves 
and each other what they thought they ought to 
be. He could see what they were doing and why 
much more clearly than they could themselves. 
But he couldn’t be a part of it — he had stood 
aside from life too long, with his nerves and his 
passion for artistic details and pleasures of the 
intellect. 

But he bowed quietly, and smiled a little. He 
felt suddenly very tired. 

“ Certainly it shall go no farther,” he assured 
her. “ And I owe you an apology for the trouble 
which I fear I have ignorantly brought upon you. 

If there is anything I can say ” 

She shook her head proudly, and Francis, fronting 
them both, made a motion of negation, too. 

You must be tired,” he added to his gesture. 
“ Or would you care to watch the dancers awhile? ” 
“ No, I thank you,” said Mr. Logan courteously 


134 I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 

in his turn. “ If you will tell me of some near-by 

hotel ” 

“ There’s only this,” explained Francis. “ But 
I think your room is ready by now. Miss O’Mara 
— I’ll call her — will show you to it.” 

Peggy, summoned by a signal whistle from the 
ballroom, convoyed Logan upstairs with abundant 
good-will and much curiosity. She had never seen 
any one like him before, and took in his looks and 
belongings with the intense and frank absorption 
of an Indian. Indeed, as she explained to Mar- 
jorie, whom she met at the foot of the stairs, it 
was only by the help of the saints and her own 
good decency that she didn’t follow him into his 
room and stay there to watch him unpack. 

With the charming, purry voice he has, and 
all the little curlicues when he finishes his words, 
and the little cane — does he never sleep without it, 
would you say? — and the little Latin books he 
reads ” 

But here Marjorie pulled her up. 

How on earth do you know he reads little Latin 
books? ” 

Peggy flushed generously. 


rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 135 

“ Well, if you must know, I gave one teeny weeny 
peek through the crack in the door after I left him, 
and he was thrown down across his cot like a long, 
graceful tomcat or leopard or something, and he 
pulled a little green leather book out of his pocket 
and went to reading it on the spot. ^ Pervigilium 
Veneris,’ its name was. All down the side.” 

Marjorie had heard of it; in fact, in pursuance 
of her education Mr. Logan had made her read sev- 
eral translations of it. It had bored her a little, 
but she had read it dutifully, because she had felt 
at that time that it would be nice to be intellectually 
widened, and because Logan had praised it so 
highly. 

“ Oh, yes, I know,” she said. 

And is it a holy book? ” Peggy inquired. 

Just a long Latin poem about people running 
around in the woods at night and having a sort of 
celebration of Venus’s birthday,” said Marjorie ab- 
sently. It occurred to her Logan would have been 
worse shocked if he could have heard her offhand 
summing-up of his pet poem than he had been 
by her attitude about going back to New York with 
him. But she had more important things on her 


136 rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 

mind than Latin poetry. When Peggy met her she 

was on her way to go off and think them out. 

Good-night, Peggy,” she said. I’m going to 
bed. I have to get up early and go to work.” 

Peggy laughed. 

Don’t talk nonsense. The dance isn’t half over, 
and everybody’s crazy to dance with you. You can 
sleep till the crack of doom to-morrow, and with 
not a soul to stop you.” 

Marjorie shook her head, smiling a little. 

“ No. I’m going over to the clearing to do the 
cooking for the men. I told Francis I would, to- 
night.” 

Peggy made the expected outcry. 

To begin with, I’ll wager you can’t cook — a 
little bit of a thing like you, that I could blow 
away with a breath! And you’d be all alone there. 
Mother won’t do it because she’s afraid of wraiths ” 
— Peggy pronounced it “wraths,” and it was evi- 
dently a quotation from Mrs. O’Mara — “ and it 
would be twice as scary for you. Though, to be 
sure, I suppose you’d have Francis. I suppose that’s 
your reason, the both of you — it sounds like the 
bossy sort of plan Francis makes.” 


rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 137 

This had not occurred to Marjorie. But she saw 
now that the only plausible reason not the truth 
that they could give for her taking Pierre’s job 
was her desire to see more of her husband. 

“ Well, it’s natural we should want to see more 
of each other,” she began lamely. 

Oh, I suppose so,” said Peggy offhandedly, and 
with one ear pricked toward the music. “But 
when my time comes I hope I won’t be that bad 
that I drag a poor girl off to do cooking, so I can 
see the more of her.” 

“ You’re getting your sexes mixed,” said Francis 
coolly, strolling up behind the girls. “ Peggy, your 
partner is looking for you. I’ll take you over after 
luncheon tc-morrow, Marjorie.” 

“ Very well,” she said. “ Good-night.” 

If his heart smote him, as Marjorie’s little, in- 
domitable figure mounted the stairs, shoulders back 
and head high, he made no sign of it. Instead, in 
spite of the preponderance of men, he went back to 
the dance, and danced straight through till the end 
had come. 

Marjorie went to bed, as she had said she would 
do. She did not go to sleep. Marjorie, as has been 


138 ryE MARRIED MARJORIE 

said, was not brave — that is, she could and did do 
brave things, but she always did them with her heart 
in her slippers. She did not know what the cook- 
ing would be, but she was sure it would be worse 
than she could imagine, and too much for her 
strength. The only comfort was the recollection 
that the dear brown cabin was hers to live in, every 
moment that she was not at work. She would have 
that rest and comfort. There was the shelf of books 
chosen for her by the far-off Francis who was not 
doubtful of her, and loved her and dreamed about 
her, and built a house all around the vision of her. 
And there might be times when she could hurry 
up a great deal, and lie on the window-seat and look 
out at the woodlands and dream. 

She finally went to sleep. She wakened with a 
start, early, vaguely remembering that there was a 
great deal to do. Full remembrance came as she 
sprang out of bed and ran down the hall to her 
bath. She had to pack, and after luncheon Francis 
would carry her off to imprisonment with hard labor. 
And — why on earth was she doing it, when she 
could still go back with Logan? For a long half 
hour she struggled with herself, one minute deciding 


I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 139 

to go back, the next deciding to stay. Finally she 
faced the thing. She would see it through, if it 
killed her. She would make Francis respect her, 
if it took six months instead of three at hard labor. 
She would take the wages for the work she had 
done, and go back home a free, self-respecting 
woman. 

She dressed herself quickly, and went down to 
breakfast, braced to play her part before the 
O ’Maras. Short as her time with them, she was 
fond of them already. 

“ I think your devotion is a bit hard on yer wife,” 
remarked Mrs. O’Mara, whom Peggy had put in 
possession of the facts. “ If I were her, I’d value 
an affection more that had less o’ dishwashin’ 
in it! ” 

She’s helping me over a pretty hard place.” 

Francis said this calmly. But he flushed in a 
way that, as Marjorie knew, meant he was dis- 
turbed. You know every man counts just now, 
and labor is cruelly scarce. I’m doing mine and 
a day-laborer’s work besides, now. And the con- 
tract has to be finished.” 

“ Well, of course, there’s a gown or so for her 


140 I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 
in it,” said Mrs. O’Mara comfortably. “And ’tis 
no more than a woman should do, to help out her 
man if he needs it. Have ye any aprons or work- 
dresses, me dear, for if not Peggy and me will 
make ye some. We’ve a bolt of stuff.” 

“ No, and I’d be very glad if you would,” said 
Marjorie, feeling the thing more irrevocable every 
moment. 

“ And rest this morning, and I’ll pack for you,” 
said Peggy affectionately. She led Marjorie out to 
the swing herself, and went upstairs to pack before 
she went to help her mother with the breakfast 
dishes. 

Marjorie was too restless to lie still. She went 
out and walked about the place, and came back and 
lay down, and so put in the interminable hours till 
luncheon. After luncheon Francis appeared like 
the messenger of doom he was, put her and a small 
bag in the side-car and carried her off to her place 
of servitude. 

The ride, in spite of all, was pleasant. For a while 
neither of them spoke. Then Francis did. 

“ I feel as if this was unfair to you — for appar- 
ently the O’Maras think, and I suppose everybody 


I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 141 
will, that you really are doing this to show your 
fondness for me. I shall have to ask you to let 
them think so.” 

“ I have,” she answered curtly. 

“ You don’t understand. I — I am going to have 
to stay in the cabin with you. . . . There is the 
little upstairs balcony, I can bunk in that. You 
know — the one over the door, with the little winding 
stair leading up to it. I — I’m sorry.” 

This was one more thing Marjorie hadn’t counted 
on. But after all what did it matter? She expected 
to be so deadly tired from the work she had prom- 
ised to do that she would never know whether Fran- 
cis was in the house at all. And if there really were 
bears once in awhile it would really be better not 
to be all alone with them. 

‘^Very well,” she said. She looked hungrily at 
the thick trees they were speeding through. She 
supposed she would never have time to lie out 
under a tree, or go hunting for flowers and new 
little wood-paths again. She had read stories of 
lone, draggled women in logging-camps, toiling so 
hard they hadn’t even time to comb their hair, but 
always wore it pulled back tight from their fore- 


142 I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 

head. This wasn’t a logging-camp, but she supposed 

there was very little difference. 

She was very quiet for awhile. Francis, turning 
finally, a little uneasy, found that she was quietly 
crying. It happened that he had never seen her 
cry before. 

Please, Marjorie! ” he begged in a terrified 
voice. “ Please stop! Is there anything I can do? ” 

You have done everything,” she said in a little 
quiet voice that tried not to break, but did, most 
movingly, on the last word. 

She said nothing more after that. After awhile 
she got hold of herself, dried her eyes, and began 
to watch the woods desperately again, as if she 
would never see them any more. If she had but 
known it, she was making Francis suffer as much 
as she was suffering herself. 

I’ll bring the rest of your things over now,” 
lie said, when he had carried her little bag in and 
put it on her bed. He went out and left her alone, 
in the little wood-walled bedroom with its high, lat- 
ticed windows, and Indian blankets and birch-bark 
trimmings. She lay on the bed apathetically awhile, 
then she began to notice things a little. There was 


I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 145 

a kodak on her bureau. There were snowshoes, 
too small for a man surely — if you could tell of a 
thing the size of snowshoes — hanging on the wall. 
There was a fishing-rod case, with something hang- 
ing near it that she imagined was a fiybook. There 
was a little trowel, and a graceful birch-bark basket, 
as if some one might want to go out and bring home 
plants. She got up finally, her curiosity stronger 
than her unhappiness, and investigated. 

There was dust on everything. That is, except 
in one particular. On top of each article she had 
noticed was a square, clean place about the size 
of an envelope. There had been a note lying or 
pinned to each one of the things. 

It occurred to Marjorie that a man who had 
not noticed the dust might have overlooked one of 
the notes; and she commenced a detailed and care- 
ful search. The kodak told no tales, nor the snow- 
shoes. The fishing-rod was only explanatory to the 
extent of being too light and small for a man, and 
the basket’s only contents were two pieces of oil- 
cloth, apparently designed to keep wet plants from 
dripping too much. 

She rose and tiptoed out into the living-room. 


144 I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 
There might be more notes there. Her spirits had 
gone up, and she was laughing to herself a little — 
it felt like exploring Bluebeard’s castle. She inves- 
tigated the book case, shaking out every book. She 
ran up to the toy balcony and even pushed out the 
couch there, noticing for the first time that the bal- 
cony had curtains which could be drawn. But there 
was nothing behind couch or curtains. She put her 
hands on the little railing and looked down at the 
room below her, to see if she had missed anything. 
And her eyes fell on a cupboard which was level 
with the wall at one side, and had so escaped her 
eye heretofore. Also there was a scrapbasket which 
might tell tales. 

She dashed down the little stair, and made for 
the scrapbasket, but Francis was more thorough 
than she had thought, and it was empty. She opened 
the cupboard and looked in — there was a little 
flashlight lying near it, and she illuminated 
the dark with it. There in the cupboard lay a 
banjo. 

Gracious! ” breathed Marjorie. “ What a mem- 
ory! ” For she could play the banjo, and it ap- 
peared that she must have said so to Francis in 


I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 145 

those first days. “ He must have dashed home and 
made out lists every night! ” she concluded as she 
dragged it out. It was unstrung, but new strings 
lay near it, coiled in their papers. And under the 
papers, so like them that he had forgotten to de- 
stroy it, lay a veritable note. 

“It isn’t really from him to me,” she thought, 
her heart beating unaccountably as she sat back 
on her heels and tore the envelope open. “ It’s from 
the Francis he thought he was, to the Marjorie he 
thought I was.” 

But she read it just the same. 

“ For my dear little girl, if she comes true,” was 
the superscription. 

“I don’t know whether you’ll find this first or 
last, honey. But it’s for you to play on, sometimes, 
in the evenings, sitting on the window-seat with me, 
or out on the veranda if you’d rather. But wher- 
ever you sit to play it, I may stay quite close to 
you, mayn’t I? ” 

She was tired and overstrained. That was prob- 
ably why she put both arms around the banjo as 
if it was somebody that loved her, and cried on it 
very much as if it were a baby. And when she went 


146 I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 

back to her room to replace things as she had found 

them she carried it with her. 

She was calmer after that, for some reason. She 
had the illogical feeling that some one had been 
kind to her. She put her things away in the draw- 
ers, and even had the courage to lay out for her- 
self the all-enveloping gingham apron, much short- 
ened, which Mrs. O’Mara had loaned her till she 
and Peggy could run up some more. She supposed 
Francis would want her to start in with the cook- 
ing that night. So she put on her plainest dress 
and easiest shoes, and then, there being nothing else 
to do, took the banjo out into the sitting-room 
and began to string it. And as she strung she 
thought. 

She was going to have to be pretty close to Francis 
till her term of service was up; she might as well 
not fight him. It would make things easier all round 
if she didn’t, as long as she had to keep on friendly 
terms before people. 

The truth was, that she couldn’t but feel soft- 
ened to the man who had written that boyish, loving 
note. “ Even if it wasn’t to the her he knew now, 
it was to the Marjorie of last year, and she was a 


I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 147 

near relation/’ thought the Marjorie of this year 
whimsically. 

So when Francis came back with the rest of her 
baggage he found her on the window-seat with the 
banjo in her lap, fingering it softly, and smiling at 
him. She could see that he was a little startled, but 
he had himself in hand directly, and came forward^ 
saying, So you found the banjo. I got it for you 
in the first place. Is it any good? ” 

“ Oh, did you? ” inquired his wife innocently. 
“ Yes, it’s a very good banjo. Maybe I’ll find time 
to play it some day when the housework for the 
men is out of the way. What do I do when I be- 
gin? And hadn’t we better go over now? ” 

“ I didn’t expect you to start till to-morrow,” he 
explained. “ I’ve taken one of the men off his 
regular work to attend to it till then.” 

“ Oh, that’s kind of you,” she answered, still 
friendly and smiling to a degree that seemed to per- 
plex him. But perhaps you could take me over 
to-night and show me. I’ll get supper for us two 
here, if you like, and afterward we can go over, 
and you can introduce me to your men as the new 
cook. I hope they’ll like me as well as Pierre.” 


148 I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 

He looked at her still as if she were behaving in 
a very unexpected way. A tamed Marjorie was 
something new in his experience; and tameness at 
this juncture was particularly surprising. Francis 
was beginning to feel like a brute, which may have 
been what his wife intended. 

“ That’s very kind of you,” he managed to say. 

You’re sure you are not too tired for any of 
that? ” 

“ Being tired isn’t going to count, is it? ” she 
asked, smiling. No, I don’t mind doing it. It 
will be like playing with a doll-house. You know, 
I love this little place.” 

In her wicked heart she was thinking, He shall 
miss me — oh, if I can keep my temper and be per- 
fectly lovely for three months he shall miss me so 
when I go and get my divorce that he will want 
to die! ” And she looked up at him, one hand on 
the banjo, as if they were the best friends in the 
world. 

“ It isn’t time to get supper yet, is it? ” she pur- 
sued. You used to like to hear me sing. Don’t 
you want to sit down here by me while I see how 
the banjo works, just for a little while? ” 


149 


rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 

‘‘No! ” said Francis abruptly. “I have to — I 
have to go and see after a lot more work.’^ 

He flung out the door, and it crashed after him. 
And Marjorie laughed softly and naughtily to her- 
self over the banjo, and pushed the note that had 
dwelt within farther down inside her dress. “ I 
wish I had the rest! said she. “ Let me see. The 
kodak was for both of us to go out and take pic- 
tures together, of course. The snowshoes — that 
would have had to wait till winter. The basket and 
trowel were so we could plant lots of lovely woodsy 
things we found around the cabin, to see if they 
would take root. And he must have been going 
to teach me to fish. I wonder why he wasn’t going 
to teach me to shoot. There must be a rifle some- 
where — maybe it hasn’t lost its note, if it was hid- 
den hard enough. And he remembered how I liked 
‘ surprises.’ He certainly would have made a good 
lover if I hadn’t ” 

She did not finish. She got up and hunted for 
the rifle, which was not to be found. Then she 
went into the kitchen and hunted for stores, and 
wondered how on earth a balanced menu could be 
evolved from cans and dried things exclusively. But 


150 I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 
the discovery of a cache of canned vegetables helped 
her out, and as she really was a good cook, and 
loved cooking, what Francis returned to was not 
supper, but a very excellent little dinner. And his 
wife had found time, as well, to dress herself in 
the most fluffy and useless-looking of rosy summer 
frocks, with white slippers. She looked more frag- 
ile and decorative and childish than he had ever 
seen her, leaning across the little table talking 
brightly to him about her adventures in the 
discovery of the things that made up the 
meal. 

An old quotation about “breaking a butterfly 
upon a wheel ’’ came to him as she chattered on, 
telling him delightedly how she had made up her 
mind to surprise him with tomato bisque if it was 
her last act, and how she had discovered a box that 
was labeled “ condensed milk,” and opened it with 
infinite pains and a hatchet; and how after she had 
nearly killed herself struggling with it, she had 
finally opened it, and found that what it really con- 
tained was deviled ham in small, vivid tins; and 
how she triumphed over Fate by using the ham with 
other things for hors oeuvres; and how she finally 


rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 151 

found powdered milk in other tins, and achieved 
her goal after all. 

She was exactly as she would have been if all 
had gone well; and it is not to be supposed that 
Francis could help feeling it. At first he was quiet, 
almost gloomy; but presently, as she talked gaily 
on about all the trifles she could think of — domestic 
trifles all of them, or things to do with the cabin 
and its surroundings — he gave himself up to the 
enjoyment of the hour. It was as if he said to 
himself, “ I’ll forget for this little space of time 
that it isn’t real.” He looked absorbedly into the 
little vivid face at the other side of the table, and 
once, before he thought, put out his hand to take 
her hand where it lay, little and slim and fragile- 
looking, on the table. He drew it back quickly, 
but not before Marjorie had seen the instinctive 
motion. 

She smiled at him brilliantly, and touched him 
lightly on the shoulder as she passed. 

Come, help me, Francis,” she said. This is 
our house, you know, and I mustn’t do everything 
alone. And then I must hurry over to the other 
cabin, and look over my new kingdom, and it 


152 I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 
would be a shame to do it after your faithful slaves 
had gone to bed. They would have to get up and 
dress and stand at attention, wouldn’t they, when 
they heard your august footstep? ” 

She laughed openly at him as she went into the 
kitchen, and he followed her and helped her clear 
away obediently and smiling. 

“ And now, we’ll go over,” she said, when every- 
thing was in place again. “ Get me my long blue 
cape, Francis, please. It’s hanging against the door 
in my room.” 

He came and wrapped her in it, and crossed with 
her the space between the two cabins. 

They’re up yet,” he said, and knocked on the 
door. 


CHAPTER VIII 


There was nothing surprising or exciting to behold 
when the door flew open, and the two entered. 

Oh, IVe met you before,’^ said Marjorie po- 
litely to the man who had opened it. She had 
danced with him the night before, and it was pleas- 
ant to find that she had not to deal entirely with 
strangers. He was a tired-looking, middle-aged 
Englishman, with a tanned, plump face that had 
something whimsical and what Marjorie character- 
ized to herself as motherly about it. And the fact 
that he was clad in a flannel shirt and very dis- 
reputable overalls did not make him the less dis- 
tinctively gentle-bred. He greeted her courteously, 
and took out his pipe — a pipe that was even more 
disreputable than his clothes. 

“ Mrs. Ellison wanted to come over to-night and 
see what she had to do,” Francis explained. 

“ You mean that you were in earnest about her 
volunteering to take Pierre’s place? ” demanded the 


153 


154 I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 
Englishman, looking at the little smiling figure in 
pink organdy. 

I know I look useless,’’ interposed Marjorie for 
herself. “ But Mr. Ellison will tell you that I really 
can work hard. If somebody will only show me a 
little about the routine I’ll be all right.” 

I’ve taken over Pierre’s job for the moment,” 
he replied. ^‘Assuredly I’ll show you all I can. 
But it’s rough work for a girl.” 

Marjorie smiled on. 

Very well, show me, please,” she demanded, as 
she would if the question had been one of walking 
over red-hot plowshares. 

She stood and looked about her as he answered 
her, so intent that she did not hear what he 
replied. 

The place had rows of bunks in various stages 
'of untidiness. It was lighted by two very smoky 
kerosene lamps, and had in its middle a table with 
cards on it. Three men sat about the table, as if 
they did not quite know whether to come forward 
and be included in the conversation or not. At the 
further end Marjorie could see the door that led 
to the cooking-place, and eyed it with interest. 


rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 155 

‘‘ These are all of the men who are here,” Francis 
explained. “ There is another camp some miles 
further in the forest.” 

Am I to cook for them as well? ” demanded 
Marjorie coolly. 

“ Oh, no,” the Englishman answered. He seemed 
deeply shocked at the idea. “ They have a cook. 
By the way, Mrs. Ellison, it is only poetic justice 
that you should have taken over this job; for do you 
know that the reason Pierre gave for his sudden 
flight in the direction of marriage was that you and 
Mr. Ellison looked so happy he got lonesome for 
a wife! ” 

“ Good gracious! ” gasped Marjorie before she 
remembered herself. . . . “ That is — I didn’t know 
our happiness showed as far off as that.” 

She did not dare to look at Francis, whom she 
divined to be standing rigidly behind her. ‘‘And 
now could you show me the place where I have to 
cook, and the things to cook with? ” 

Mr. Pennington — Harmsworth-Pennington was 
his veritable name, as she learned later — took the 
hint and swept her immediately off to the lean-to. 
The tout-ensemble was not terrifying. It consisted 


156 rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 
of a kerosene stove of two burners, another one 
near it for emergencies, a wooden cupboard full of 
heavy white dishes, and a lower part to it where 
the stores were. 

The hardest thing for you will be getting up 
early,” he said sympathetically. The men have to 
have breakfast and be out of here by seven o’clock. 
And they take dinner-pails with them. Then there’s 
nothing to get till the evening meal.” 

Of course there’d be tidying to do,” suggested 
Marjorie avidly, for she hated disorder, and saw a 
good deal about her. 

If you had the strength for it,” said Penning- 
ton doubtfully. 

“ Francis thinks I have,” she answered with a 
touch of wickedness. 

Francis, behind her, continued to say nothing at 
all. 

She spent five minutes more in the lean-to with 
the opportune Pennington, and gathered from him, 
finally, that next morning there would have to be a 
big pot of oatmeal cooked, and bacon enough fried 
for five hungry men. Griddle cakes, flapjacks, or 
breadstuff of some kind had to be produced also; 


I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 157 

coffee in a pot that looked big enough for a hotels 
with condensed milk, and a meal apiece for their 
dinner-hour. 

I just give ’em anything cold that’s left over,” 
said Pennington unsympathetically. There has 
to be lots of it, that’s all.” 

Marjorie cried out in horror. 

“Oh, they mustn’t have those cold! But — do 

they have to have all that every morning? ” 

“ Great Scott, no ! ” exclaimed the scandalized 
Pennington. “ Some days they just have flapjacks, 
and some days just bacon and eggs and bread. And 
sometimes oatmeal extra. I didn’t mean that all 
these came at once.” 

She felt a bit relieved. 

“ I’ll be in to-morrow at six,” she assured him, 
still smiling bravely. “ I think I can manage it 
alone.” 

“ One of us can always do the lifting for you, 
and odd chores,” he told her. 

After that she met the other men, and went 
back to the cabin. Francis was still following her 
in silence. 

“How nice they are, even the grumpy ones! ” 


158 rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 

she told him radiantly. “ Don’t forget to knock 

on my door in time to-morrow, Francis.” 

She gave him no time to reply. She simply went 
to bed. And in spite of all that had come and gone 
she was so tired that she fell asleep as soon as she 
was there. 

She was awakened by Francis’s knock at what 
seemed to her the middle of the night. Then she 
remembered that the pines shut off the light so 
that it was high daylight outside before it was in 
here. A vague feeling of terror came over her be- 
fore she remembered why; and for a moment she 
lay still in the unfamiliar bed, trying to remember. 
When she did remember she was so much more 
afraid that she sprang out hurriedly, because things, 
for some reason, are always worse when you aren’t 
quite awake. Or better. But there was nothing to 
be better just now. 

She bathed and dressed with a dogged quickness, 
trying meanwhile to reassure herself. After all, it 
was only cooking on a little larger scale than she 
was used to. After all, it was only for a few 
months. After all, she mightn’t be broken down 
by it. And — this was the only thing that was any 


I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 159 

real comfort — it would free her so completely of 
Francis, this association with him, and the daily, 
hourly realization that he had treated her in a cruel, 
unjust way, that when she went back she would be 
glad to forget that he had ever lived; even the days 
when he had been so pleasant and comforting. 

If Francis knew that the little aproned figure, 
with flushed cheeks and high-held head, was terri- 
fied and homesick under the pride, he said nothing. 
Nothing, that is, beyond the ordinary courtesies. 
He offered to help her on with her cloak. After 
one indignant look at him she let him. The indig- 
nation would have puzzled him; but Marjorie’s feel- 
ing was that a man who would doom you to this 
sort of a life, put you to such a test as Francis 
had, was adding insult to injury in helping you on 
and off with wraps. He, of course, couldn’t grasp 
all this, and felt a little puzzled. 

She walked out and over to the door of the 
lean-to, leaving him to follow. 

Pennington’s kind and motherly face was peering 
anxiously out. It came to Marjorie that she was 
going to have a good deal of trouble keeping him 
from taking too much work off her shoulders. 


i6o rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 
Some men have the maternal instinct strongly 
developed, and of such, she was quite sure, was 
Pennington. She wondered what he was doing so 
far from England, and what she could do to pay 
him back for his friendliness — for she felt instinc- 
tively that she had a friend in him. 

Sure enough, he had started the big pot of water 
boiling for the oatmeal, and was salting it as she 
entered. 

Oh, let me! ” she cried, and before his doubting 
eyes she began to stir the oatmeal in. 

I suppose there never was a double boiler big 
enough,” she began doubtfully. “ It would save 
so much trouble.” 

‘‘ We might make one out of a dishpan, per- 
haps, swung inside this pot,” he said. 

“ And I always thought Englishmen weren’t re- 
sourceful! ” she commented, smiling at him. “ We’ll 
try it to-morrow.” 

Meanwhile, having stirred in all the oatmeal nec- 
essary, she lowered the burners a little and began 
on the coffee. Then she saw the point of the other 
stove, for she found she needed it for the bacon 
and biscuits. The actual work was not so com- 


rVE MARRIED MARJORIE i6i 
plicated; the thing that appalled her was Penning- 
ton’s insistence on the awful amount of food needed 
for the six men and herself. But, of course, as she 
reminded herself, there was a difference between 
cooking for Cousin Anna and herself on the maid’s 
day out, or for Lucille and herself, and cooking 
for six hungry men who worked in the open air 
at reforesting. She did not quite know how people 
reforested, but she had a vague image in her mind 
of people going along with armfuls of trees which 
they stuck in holes. 

Presently the breakfast was prepared, and Pen- 
nington banged briskly on a dishpan and howled 

Chowl ” in a way that was most incongruous. He 
really should have been a Rural Dean, by his looks 
and his gentle, almost clergymanly genial manners, 
and every time Marjorie looked at him in his rough 
clothes she got a shock because he wasn’t one. 

There was a long trestled table down the middle 
of the men’s cabin, and each man, streaming out, 
picked up a plate and got it filled with food, and 
sat himself down in what seemed to be an appointed 
place. There were mugs for coffee, and Marjorie, 
under Pennington’s direction, set them at all the 


i 62 I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 
places, and then went up and down filling them. 
There was a tin of condensed milk on the table, set 
there by Pennington’s helpful hand. 

She ran up and down, waiting on her charges, 
and feeling very much as if she were conducting a 
Sunday-school class picnic. The men, except Pen- 
nington and the other young Englishman, who never 
talked to the last day she knew him, seemed struck 
into terrified silence by their new cook. 

And then a terrible thought came over her — it 
was rather a funny one, though, for the excitement 
of doing all this new work had stirred her up, 
rather than saddened her. She had never prepared 
any dinner-pails for them. She fled back into the 
cook-place precipitately, snatched the pails down 
from the shelf, and began feverishly spreading large 
biscuits with butter and bacon. 

“ There’s marmalade in the big tin back of you,” 
said Pennington’s softly cultivated Oxford voice 
from the doorway. ^‘And if you fill the small 
buckets with coffee they will take them, together 
with the rest of their dinners.” 

“ But is that enough variety, just bacon and mar- 
malade sandwiches? ” she asked. 


rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 163 

He nodded. 

“ There are tinned vegetables that you can give 
them to-night, if you wish.’’ 

So, he helping her, they got the last dinner-pail 
filled before the hungry horde poured out again. 
Each passed with a sheepish or courteous word of 
thanks, took his pail and went on. It did not 
occur to Marjorie till she saw Pennington go, eating 
as he went a large biscuit, that he must have cut 
his own meal very short in order to help her. 

What nice people there are in the world! ’’ she 
breathed, sinking on the doorstep a minute to think 
and take breath. 

She sat there longer than she really should, be- 
cause the air was so crisp and lovely, and just as 
she was beginning to rise and go in to the sum- 
moning dishes, a small striped squirrel trotted across 
the grass and requested scraps with impudent wav- 
ings of his two small front paws. So she really 
had to stay and feed him. And after that there 
was a bird that actually seemed as if it was going 
to walk up to her, almost as the squirrel had done. 
He flew away just at the most exciting moment, 
but Marjorie didn’t hold it against him. And then 


i 64 I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 
— why, then, she felt suddenly sleepy and lay down 
with her cloak swathed around her, under a tree, 
for just a minute. And when she looked at her 
wrist-watch it was eleven o^clock. 

She felt guilty to the last degree. What would 
they say at the office to a young woman who took 
naps in the morning? 

And then the blessed memory that there was 
no reason why she shouldn't do exactly as she pleased 
with her time, so long as the dishes were done after 
awhile, came to her. 

There^s no clock in the forest,” she thought, 
smiling drowsily; and lay serenely on the pine- 
needles for another half hour. 

When she did go in, the quantity of dishes wasn’t 
so terrific. There had been no courses. Each man 
had left behind him an entirely empty plate and 
mug and knife and fork; that was all. And Mar- 
jorie seemed to have more energy and delight in 
running about and doing things than she had ever 
known she possessed, in the heavy New York air. 
She washed the dishes and swept out the 
cabin with a gay good will that surprised 
herself. She tried to feel like Cinderella or Blue; 


rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 165 
beard^s wife or some of the oppressed heroines 
who had loomed large in her past, but it wasn’t 
to be done. After that she was so hungry — ^her own 
breakfast had been taken in bites, on the run — that 
she ate up all the remaining biscuits, after toasting 
them and making herself bacon sandwiches as she 
had for the men; quite forgetting that her own 
abode lay near, filled to repletion with stores of a 
quite superior kind. The bacon sandwiches and 
warmed-over coffee tasted better than anything she 
had ever eaten in her life. 

And then there was a whole long afternoon ahead 
of her, before she had to do a solitary thing for 
the men’s supper! 

“ I must have ‘ faculty ’! ” said Marjorie to her- 
self proudly, thinking more highly of her own talents 
than she ever had before. The fact that as a filing- 
clerk she had not shone had made her rather meek 
about her own capacities. She had always taken 
it impudently for granted that she was attractive, 
because the fact had been, so to speak, forced on 
her. But there had been a very humble-minded 
feeling about her incapacity for a business life. 
Miss Kaplan, for instance, she of the exuberant 


i66 rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 
emotions and shaky English, had a record for ac- 
curacy and speed in her particular line which was 
unsullied by a single lapse. And Lucille, 
lazy, luxury-loving Lucille, concealed behind her 
fluffinesses an undoubted and remorseless execu- 
tive ability. Compared to them Marjorie had 
always felt herself a most useless person. That 
was why she always was meeker in office hours than 
out of them. And to find herself swinging this 
work, even for one meal, without a feeling of in- 
capacity and unworthiness, made her very cheered 
indeed. The truth was, she was doing a thing she 
had a talent for. 

And I’m not tired! ” she marveled. The change 
of air was responsible for that, of course. 

She went back to her forgotten cabin, singing 
beneath her breath. It had a rather tousled air, 
but in her new enthusiasm she went through it like 
a whirlwind. She attacked her own room first, and 
created spotless order in it. Then she went at the 
living-room. Then — it was with a curious reluc- 
tance — she climbed the stairs to Francis’s absurd 
little curtained balcony. 

Francis, evidently, did not sleep so very well. 


I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 167 

or he had not that night at all events. The couch 
was very tossed, one pillow lay on the ground with 
a dent in its midst as if an angry hand had thrust 
it there, and, most unfairly, hit it after it was down. 
The covers were every which way,’’ as Marjorie 
said, picking them up and shaking them out with 
housewifely care. Francis’s pajamas and a shabby 
brown terry bath-robe lay about the floor, the bath- 
robe in a ridiculously lifelike position with both its 
sleeves thrown forward over the pillow, as if it were 
trying to comfort it for all it had been through. 

Everything had aired since morning, so she dis- 
guised the couch again in its slip-cover, put the 
cretonne covers back on the pillows, and the couch 
stood decorous and daytime-like again. She laid 
her hand on the pillow for a moment after she 
was all through, as if she were touching something 
she was sorry for. 

Poor Francis ! ” she said softly, smiling a little. 
“After all, he isn’t so terribly much older than I 
am.” She felt suddenly motherly toward him, and 
like being very kind. That maltreated pillow 
was so funny and boylike. “ It isn’t a bit like 
the storybooks,” she mused. “ In them you get 


1 68 I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 

all thrilled because a man is so masterful. Well,” 
Marjorie tried to be truthful, even when she was 
alone with herself and the couch, “ I guess I was 
thrilled, a little, when he carried me off that way. 
I certainly couldn’t have gone if I’d known about 
the housework business. But now, the only part 
of him I like is when he isn't sitting on me. . . . 
I wonder if I’ll ever be the same person, after all 
this? ” 

She never would. But, though she wondered, 
she did not really think that she was changing or 
would change. As a matter of fact, she had made 
more decisions, gone through more emotions, and 
become more of a woman in the little time since 
Francis had carried her off than in all her life 
before. The Marjorie of a year ago would not 
have answered the challenge of her husband to prove 
herself an honorable woman by taking over a long, 
hard, uncongenial task. She would have picked 
up her skirts and fled back to New York with 
Logan. 

“ I suppose it’s the war,” said Marjorie uncom- 
fortably. ‘‘Dear me, I did think that when the 
war was over it would be over. And everything 


I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 169 

seems so real yet. I wonder if when I’m an old, 
old lady talking to Lucille’s grandchildren I shall 
tell them, ^Ah, yes, my dears, your Grand-aunt 
Marjorie was a very different person in the days 
before the war! In those days you didn’t have to 
be in earnest about anything. You didn’t even 
to have any principles that showed. Life wasn’t 
real and earnest a bit. People just went to tea- 
dances and talked flippantly, and some of the men 
had drinks. And everybody laughed a great deal, 
and it was decadent, and the end of an era, and 
a lot of shocking things — but it wasn’t half as hard 
as living now, because there weren’t standards, ex- 
cept when they were had by aunts and employers 
and such people. Ah, them was the days 1 ’ And the 
grand-nieces, or whatever relation they’ll be to me, 
will look shocked, because they’ll be children of 
their time, and it will still be fashionable to be 
earnest, and they’ll say, ‘ Dear me, what a terrible 
time to have lived in! ’ And they’ll be a little bit 
envious. And they’ll say, ‘And were even you 
frivolous? ’ And I’ll sigh, and say, ‘ Yes, indeed, 
my dears! I married a worthy young man (as 
young men went then) in a thoughtless moment. 


170 I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 
and then when he came back I wouldn’t stay mar- 
ried to him. But by that time the war was over, 
and we’d all stopped being flippant and frivolous. 
So I washed dishes for him three months before I 
went and left him.’ And they’ll commend me 
faintly for doing that much, and go away secretly 
shocked.” 

Marjorie was so cheered up by her own fervent 
imaginings by this time that she stopped to sit. down 
on the arm of a chair, all by herself, and laugh 
out loud. And so Francis saw her, as he came in 
for something, and looked up, guided by her laugh. 
He had scarcely heard her laugh before for some 
time. She was perched birdlike on the arm of the 
chair at the foot of his couch, just to be glimpsed 
between the draperies of the balcony. She looked, 
to his eyes, like something too fragile and lovely 
to be real. And she was laughing! That did not 
seem real, either. She might have been pleasant, 
even cheerful, but this sprite, swinging there and 
laughing at nothing whatever, almost frightened 
him. For an awful moment he wondered if he 
had driven Marjorie mad. . . . He had been un- 
kind to her — ^hard on her, he knew. 


rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 171 

Before he could stop himself he had rushed up 
the stairs to the little balcony. 

Marjorie — Marjorie! What were you laughing 
about? he demanded in what seemed to her a very 
surprising way. 

‘‘ Why, don’t you want me to laugh? ’’ she de- 
manded in her turn, very naturally. 

“I — why — yes! But you frightened me, laugh- 
ing all by yourself that way.” 

“ Oh, I see! ” said Marjorie, looking a little em- 
barrassed. People often look surprised when I 
forget, and do it on the street. I think about things, 
and then when they seem funny to me I laugh. 
Don’t you ever have thoughts all by yourself that 
you laugh over, when you’re alone? ” 

Francis shook his head. He had a good mind, 
and a quick one, but he did not use it as something 
to amuse himself with, as Marjorie did with hers. 
He used it to work with. 

“ I beg your pardon for startling you,” he said. 

But ” 

“ I know. It looked queer. I was just thinking 
how different everybody and everything is since 
the war. We’re all so much more grown up, and 


172 I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 
responsible. And I was hearing myself talk to 
Lucille’s grandchildren, and tell them all about the 
days before the war, when everybody said they just 
didn’t care. . . . Aren’t things different? ” 

Francis nodded. 

Yes, they’re different. I don’t know exactly 
how, but they are. And we are.” 

“ Do you think you are? ” 

Francis sat down on the couch, looked at her, 
bright-eyed and grave, and nodded again. 

Yes. All the values are changed. At least they 
are for me and most of the men I came across. I 
don’t think the women are so different; you see, 
the American women didn’t have anything much 
to change them, except the ones who went over. 
We were in such a little while it didn’t have time 
to go deep.” 

He meant no disparagement, but Marjorie flared 
up. 

“ You mean me — and Lucille — and all the rest! ” 
she accused him. “ You’re quite wrong. That was 
just what I was telling Lucille’s grandchildren. We 
are different. Why, do you think I would have 
thought I owed you anything — owed it to you to 


I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 173 
stay up here and drudge — before the war? I never 
thought about being good, particularly, or honorable, 
or owing things to people. Oh, I suppose I did, 
in a way, because I’d always been brought up to 
play fair. But never with the top of my mind. 
You know yourself, all anybody wanted was a good 
time. If anybody had told me, when I was seven- 
teen — I was seventeen when the war started, wasn’t 
I? — that I’d care more about standards than about 
fun, I’d have just thought they were lying, or they 
didn’t know. And right and wrong have come to 
matter in the most curious way.” 

I think perhaps,” he answered her — they had 
quite forgotten that they were enemies by now — 
that the war was in the air. Maybe the world 
felt that there wouldn’t be much chance for good 
times for it — for our generation — again, and 
snatched at it. You know, for a good many years 
things won’t be the same, even for us in America, 
who suffered less, perhaps, than any other nation 
in the world. Life’s harder, and it will be.” 

“ Oh, always? ” demanded Marjorie. “ You 
know, Francis, I always wanted good times worse 
than anything in the world, but that isn’t saying 


174 I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 
I had them. I didn’t. Won’t I ever have any more? 
That few weeks when I raced around with you and 
Billy and Lucille was really the first time I’d been 
free and had fun with people I liked, ever since 
I’d been born. And — and I suppose it went to my 
head a little bit.” 

She looked up at him like a child who has been 
naughty and is sorry, and he looked over at her, 
his face going tense, as it did when he felt things. 

I don’t think we were exactly free agents,” he 
said musingly. Something was pushing us. I’m 
not sorry . . . except that it was hardly fair to 
you ” 

She leaned toward him impulsively, holding out 
her hand. He bent toward her, flushing. They 
were nearer than they had been since that day 
when his summons to war came. And then Fate 
— as Mr. Logan might have said — knocked at the 
door. 


CHAPTER IX 


The two on the balcony moved a little away from 
each other. Then Marjorie, coloring for no reason 
whatsoever, stepped down the toy stairs that wound 
like a dolFs-house staircase, and went to the door. 

It was Peggy O’Mara, no more and no less, but 
what a Peggy! She looked like an avenging god- 
dess. But it was not at Marjorie that her vengeance 
was directed, it was plainly to be seen, for she 
swept the smaller girl to her bosom with one strong 
and emotional arm, and said, “You poor abused 
little lamb! IVe come to tell you that I know all 
about it! ” 

Marjorie jerked herself away in surprise. For 
one thing, she had been very much interested in 
the conversation she had been carrying on with 
Francis, and had entirely forgotten that she might 
ever have had any claim to feel abused. For an- 
other thing, Peggy knew more than she should, if 
Logan had kept his promise. 


175 


176 I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 

Won’t — won’t you come in? ” she asked inade- 
quately. ‘‘ And please tell me what you mean.” 

‘‘Mean! I mean I know all about it! ” said 
Peggy, who was sixteen only, in spite of her god- 
dess-build, and romantic. 

She came in, nevertheless, holding tight to Mar- 
jorie as if she might faint, unaided; guided her to 
the downstairs couch, and sat down with her, hold- 
ing tight to her still. 

“Yes,” said Marjorie, with a certain amount of 
coldness, considering that she was being regarded 
as an abused lamb, “ you said that before. And 
now please tell me what it is that you know all 
about.” 

“ Well, if that’s the way you take being defended,” 
said Peggy with a certain amount of temper, “ I’ll 
just go back the way I came! ” 

“ But, Peggy, I don’t know anything about it! ” 
she pleaded. “ Please tell me everything.” 

“ There’s nothing much to tell,” said Peggy, quite 
chilly in her turn. But now she had more to face 
than Marjorie. Francis, militant and stern, strode 
down the steps and planted himself before the girls. 
He fixed his eye on Peggy in a way that she clearly 


I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 177 

was not used to stand up under, and said, “ Out with 
it, Peggy! ” 

So Peggy, under his masculine eye, ‘‘made her 
soul.” 

“ It’s nothing that concerns you, Francis Elli- 
son! ” she began. “It’s simply that I’ve learned 
how a man can treat a woman. And you — you that 
I’ve known since I was a child! And telling me 
fairy-tales of bold kidnapers and cruel husbands and 
all, and I never knowing that you were going to 
grow up and be one! ” 

Marjorie laughed — she couldn’t help it, Peggy was 
so severe. Francis looked at her again in some sur- 
prise, and Peggy was plainly annoyed. 

“ I should say,” said Francis with perfect calm, 
“ that our honorable friend Mr. Logan had been 
confiding in you. His attitude is a little biased; 
however, let that pass. Just what did he say? ” 

“Just nothing at all, except that you were a 
charming young man, and he wished that he were 
as able to face the world and its problems as you,” 
Peggy answered spiritedly. “ None of your insinu- 
ations about his honor, please. And shame on you 
to malign a sick man! ” 


178 I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 

Oh, is Mr. Logan sick? ” asked Marjorie, for- 
getting other interests. She turned to Francis, for- 
getting their feud again, in a common and inex- 
cusable curiosity. “Francis! Now we’ll know what 
it really was that ailed him — the nervous spells, you 
know? I always told you it wasn’t fits! ” 

“How do you know it isn’t?” said Francis. 
“ Peggy hasn’t said.” 

“ She wouldn’t be so interested if it was,” said 
Marjorie triumphantly. “ It takes an old and dear 
wife to stand that in a man.” 

They had no business to be ^fleeted from Peggy 
and her temper by any such ^^^isideration; but it 
was a point which had occupied their letters for a 
year, off and on, and there had been bets 
upon it. 

“ Let me see, I suppose those wagers stand — was 
it candy, or a Hun helmet? ” said Francis. 

“ Candy,” said Marjorie. “ But it was really the 
principle of the thing. Ask her.” 

Francis turned back to Peggy, who was becoming 
angrier and angrier; for when you start forth to 
rescue any one, it is annoying, even as Logan found 
it, to have the rescue act as if it were nothing to 
her whether she was rescued or not. 


I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 179 

“ Now, what really does ail him, Pegeen? ” he 
asked affectionately. Did you see him, or don’t 
you know? ” 

Of course I saw him — am I not nursing him? 
And of course I know! Poor man, the journey up 
here nearly killed him.” 

How? It seemed like a nice journey to me,” 
said Marjorie thoughtlessly. 

“ There’s no use pretending you’re happy,” said 
Peggy relentlessly. “ I know you’re not. It’s very 
brave, but useless.” 

But has he fits ” demanded Marjorie with un- 
mistakable intensity 

“ He has not,” said Peggy scornfully. I don’t 
know where you’d get the idea. He fainted this 
morning when he tried to get up. He didn’t come 
down to breakfast, and we thought him tired out, 
and let him lie. But after awhile, perhaps at nine 
or so, we thought it unnatural that any one should 
be asleep so long. So I tiptoed up, because when 
you’re as fat as mother it does wear you to climb 
more stairs than are needful. And there was the 
poor man, all dressed beautifully, even to his glasses 
with the black ribbon, lying across the bed, in a 


i8o I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 

“ Are you sure it was a faint? ” the Ellisons de- 
manded with one voice. 

Peggy looked more scornful, if possible, than she 
had for some time. 

“We had to bring him to with aromatic spirits 
of ammonia, and slapping his hands. And the doc- 
tor says it’s his heart. That is, it isn’t really his 
heart, but his nerves are so bad that they make 
some sort of a condition that it’s just as bad as 
if he had heart- trouble really. Simulated heart- 
trouble, the doctor called it. You understand, he 
doesn’t pretend, himself ; his heart makes his nerves 
pretend, as well as I can make it out. Sure it must 
be dreadful to have nerves that act that way to you. 
I wonder what nerves feel like, anyway.” 

Peggy herself was getting off the topic, through 
her interest in the subject. 

“ But how did you find out that I was beating 
Marjorie? ” inquired Francis calmly, pulling her 
back. 

She shot a furious glance at him. 

“ I wish you hadn’t reminded me. I’d forgotten 
all about hating you for your horrid ways. It was 
just before he came to. He thought he was talking 


rVE MARRIED MARJORIE i8i 
to you, and he said, ^You had no right to force 
her to do that work, Ellison, it will kill her J ” 

And was that all? ’’ asked Marjorie. 

“ Wasn’t that enough? And I ask you, Marjorie 
Ellison, isn’t it true? Hasn’t Francis forced you to 
come over here and do his cooking for him? Oh, 
Francis, I can’t understand it in you,” said poor 
Peggy, looking up at him appealingly. You that 
were always so tender and kind with every one, to 
make a poor little thing like Marjorie work at cook- 
ing and cleaning for great rough men.” 

Francis had colored up while she spoke. One 
hand, behind his back, was clenching and unclench- 
ing nervously. He»was fronting the two girls, but 
turned a little away from Marjorie and toward 
Peggy, so Marjorie could see it. Aside from that 
he was perfectly quiet, and so far as any one could 
see, entirely unmoved. Only Marjorie knew he was 
not unmoved. That dark, thin, clenching hand — 
she had seen it before, restless and betraying, and 
she knew it meant that Francis was angry or un- 
happy. She felt curiously out of it all. She had 
made up her mind once and for all to go through 
with her penance, if one could call it that. Her 


i 82 rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 

mind was so unsettled and hard to make up 
that, once made up on this particular point, she 
felt it would be more trouble to stop than to 
go on. She leaned a little back against Peggy’s 
guarding arm, and let the discussion flow on 
by her. 

“ Marjorie is free to go at any time; she knows 
that,” he said. 

Marjorie looked at him full. She said nothing 
whatever. But Peggy’s Irish wit jumped at the 
right solution. 

“ Yes, free to go, no doubt, but with what kind 
of a string to it? ” she demanded triumphantly. 
“ I’ll wager it’s like the way mother makes me free 
of things. ^ Oh, sure ye can smoke them little ciga- 
rette things if ye like — but if ye do it’s out of my 
door ye’ll go! ’ ” 

Marjorie thought it was time to take a hand here. 
Francis was standing there, still, not trying to an- 
swer Peggy. He seemed to Marjorie pitifully at 
their mercy; why, she did not know, for he had 
neither said nor looked anything but the utmost 
sternness. And Marjorie herself knew that he was 
not being kind or fair — that he had not been, in his 


I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 183 
exaction. Still she looked at that hand, moving like 
a sentient thing, and spoke. 

Peggy, some day I’ll tell you all about it, or 
Francis will. You and Francis have been friends 
for a long, long time, and I don’t want you to be 
angry with him because of me — just a stranger. 
And for the present, I can tell you only this, that 
Francis is right, I am doing this of my own free 
will. You are a darling to come and care about 
what happens to me.” 

Peggy was softened at once. She pulled Mar- 
jorie to her and gave her a sounding kiss. 

And you’re a darling, too, and you’re not a 
stranger — don’t we love you for Francis’s sake — 
oh, there, and I was forgetting! I suppose I’m not 
to be down on you, Francis. But I couldn’t help 
thinking things were queer. It’s not the customary 
way to let your bride spend her honeymoon, from 
all I’ve heard. Oh, and it’s five o’clock, and it takes 
an hour and a half to get back, though I borrowed 
the priest’s housekeeper’s bicycle.” 

She sprang up, dropping from her lap the bundle 
of aprons which Marjorie had waited for. 

Mind, Francis, I’ve not forgiven you yet,” she 


i 84 rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 
called back. When poor Mr. Logan is better I’ll 
have the whole story out of him, or my name’s not 
Margaret O’Mara.” 

She was on her bicycle and away before they 
could answer her. 

‘‘ And it’s time I went over to the cook-shed,” 
said Marjorie evenly, rising, too, and beginning to 
unfasten the bundle of aprons. They were a little 
hard to unfasten, from the too secure knots Mrs. 
O’Mara had made, and she dropped down again, 
bending intently over them to get them free. Sud- 
denly they were pushed aside, and Francis had 
flung himself down by her, with his head on her 
knees, holding her fast. 

^^Oh, Marjorie, Marjorie I ” he said. Don’t 
stay. I can’t bear to have you acting like this— 
like an angel. I’ve been unfair and unkind — it 
didn’t need Peggy to tell me that. Go on away 
from me. And forgive me, if you can, some time.” 

She looked down at the black head on her knees. 
It was victory, then — of a sort. And suddenly her 
perverse heart hardened. 

“ Please get up, Francis,” she said in the same 
cold and even voice she had used before. “ I haven’t 


rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 185 

time for this sort of thing; it’s time I went over 
and got the men their supper. They’ll be ready 
for it at six, Pennington said.” 

He rose quietly and stood aside, while she took 
off the apron of Mrs. O ’Mara’s that she had been 
making shift with, and put one of the new ones 
on in its place, and went out of their cabin. She 
never looked back. She went swiftly and straight 
to the cook-shed and began work, on the evening 
meal. There was a feeling of triumph in her heart. 
And nothing on earth would tempt her to go now. 
Francis was beginning to feel his punishment. And 
she wasn’t through with him yet. 

She found an oven which sat on top of the burners, 
and had just managed to lift it into its place when 
Pennington walked leisurely in behind her. 

“I had to come* back to get your husband,” he 
explained, “and I thought I’d see if you were in 
any troubles. Let me set that straight for you.” 

He adjusted it as it should be, and lingered to 
tell her anything else ^he might wish to know. 

“I’m going to give them codfish cakes for break- 
fast,” she confided to him, “a great many! But 
what on earth can I have for their dinners? ” 


i86 I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 

“ There is canned corn beef hash/’ he suggested. 
“ That would do all right for to-night. Or you might 
have fish.” 

“ Where would I get it? ” 

Indians. They come by with strings of fish 
to sell, often. I think I can go out and send one 
your way.” 

“ You speak as if there were Indians around every 
corner,” she said. 

‘^No-o, not exactly,” he answered her slowly. 

But the truth is that I saw one, with a string of 
fish, crossing up from the stream, not long ago. 
As I was riding and he walking, I think it likely 
that I shall intercept him on my way back. That 
is, if you want the fish.” 

Oh, indeed, I do,” she assured him eagerly. 

That is — do you think the Indian — he won’t hurt 
me, will he? And do you think he would clean 
them for me? ” 

“ I think I can arrange that with him,” Penning- 
ton, who was rapidly assuming the shape of a 
guardian angel to Marjorie, assured her. 

“ And now I must go and tell your husband that 
he’s wanted down where the men are.” 


rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 187 

“ Thank you,” she said, looking up at his plump, 
tanned, rather quaint face — so like, as she always 
thought, a middle-aged rector’s in an English novel 
— with something grotesque and yet pathetic about 
it. I don’t know what I’d do without your help. 
In a day or so I may get to the point where I’ll 
be very clever, and very independent.” 

She smiled up at him, and he looked down at 
her with what she characterized in her own mind 
as his motherly expression. “You’re such a little 
thing! ” he said as if he couldn’t help it. Then, 
after a hasty last inquiry as to whether there was 
anything more he could do, he went off in search 
of Francis. 

She looked after him with a feeling of real affec- 
tion. 

“ He’s the nearest I have to a mother ! ” she said 
to herself whimsically, as she addressed herself to 
the preparation of the evening meal. She had con- 
ceived the brilliant plan of doing the men’s lunches, 
where it was possible, the night before. In this way, 
she thought, though it might take a little more time 
in the afternoon, it would make things easier in 
the mornings. Such an atmosphere of hurry as 


i88 rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 

she had lived in that morning, while it had been 

rather fun for once, would be too tiring in the long 

run, she knew. And the run would be long — three 

months. 

The Indian came duly with the fish, all cleaned 
and ready to fry. She was baking beans in the 
oven for to-morrow’s luncheons. So she baked the 
potatoes, too, and hunted up some canned spinach, 
and then — having miscalculated her time — conceived 
the plan of winning the men’s hearts with a pud- 
ding. She was sure Pierre’s cookery had never run 
to such delicacies. And even then there was time 
to spare. The men were late, or something had hap- 
pened. So she looked to be sure that there was 
nothing more she could do, and then strayed off 
to the edges of the woods, looking for flowers. She 
found clumps of bloodroot, great anemone-flowers 
that she picked by the handful. There were some 
little blue flowers, also, whose name she did not 
know; and sprays of wintergreen berries and long 
grasses. Greatly daring, she put one of the low, 
flat vases she had found in her cabin in the center 
of the men’s trestle-table, and filled it with her 
treasure-trove. Then, a little tired, she sat down 


I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 189 

by the table herself, resting for a moment before 
the drove should come home. 

They were in on her before she knew it. She 
thought afterward that she must have fallen asleep. 
How dainty and how winning a picture of home she 
made for the rough men, she never thought. But 
the men did, and the foremost one, a big, rough 
Yankee, instinctively halted on tiptoe as he saw her, 
leaning back in her chair with her eyes shut. Mar- 
jorie was not in the least fragile physically, but she 
was so little and slender that, in spite of her wild- 
rose flush and her red lips, she always impressed 
men with a belief in her fragility. 

“Look at there, boys! ” he half said, half whis- 
pered; and the crew halted behind him, looking at 
Marjorie as if she were some very wonderful and 
lovely thing. 

The steps, or perhaps the eyes fixed admiringly 
bn her, woke Marjorie. She opened her eyes, and 
smiled a little. She had gone to sleep very pleased, 
on account of the flowers, and of having arranged 
her work so it fitted in properly. 

“Oh, you’ve come! she said, smiling at them 
as a friendly child might smile, flushed with 


190 I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 

sleep. “ Did you have a hard day? Everything’s 

ready.” 

She was up and out in the cook-shed, half-fright- 
€ned of their friendly eyes, before they could say 
any more. That is, to her. 

Gosh, that’s some wife of yours! ” said one of 
them to Francis, who was a little in the rear of the 
others. “ But ain’t she a little thing? ” 

Francis simply said “ Yes ” constrainedly. He 
Bad heard all that before. Pennington, who did not 
as a rule like girls, had been telling him what a 
lucky devil he was, as they went over to the work- 
ing place together. He also had said that Marjorie 
was a little thing. And the note in his voice as 
Be said it had insinuated to Francis, who was all 
too sensitive for such insinuations, that she was 
•scarcely the type of woman to cook for a men’s 
ecamp. Francis felt quite remorseful enough 
^already. He sat down with the rest, while Mar- 
jorie brought in first the big platter of fish, then 
the vegetables, and a big pitcher of cocoa which 
i she had made. 

Some eats! ” said another of the crew, and Mar- 
jorie dimpled appreciatively. While she went out 


I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 191 

again, after something she had forgotten, one of 
I the Frenchmen whispered bashfully to Pennington,, 
who was Francis’s assistant. He smiled his slow, 
half-mocking, half-kindly smile, and passed it on to 
Francis. 

Ba’tiste says that he wonders if the lady would 
sit down and eat with us. Do you think she would^ 
Ellison? It’s a long time since any of us had a lady 
keep house for us.” 

“ I’ll ask her,” said Francis, the taciturn. He 
would rather have done a good many things than 
go to Marjorie with a request, as things stood be- 
tween them, but there was nothing else for it. He 
came on her, standing on tiptoe at the cupboard,, 
like a child, trying to reach down a cup. She had 
counted one too few. 

He stood behind her and took it down, reaching 
over her head. 

^^Oh, thank you, Mr. Pennington!” she said^ 
I taking it for granted that it was her accustomed 
helper. 

^Mt isn’t Pennington; it’s — me,” said Francis. 

— I wouldn’t have bothered you, but you see 
the men sent me out here on an errand.” 


192 


I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 

“ The men sent you on an errand? ” she said 
wonderingly. “ That sounds topsy-turvy. I thought 
you sent them on errands.” 

^^Not this kind. They want to know if you 
won’t sit down and eat with them to-night. The 
flowers and the food made a hit, and they agree 
with everybody else in the world, as far as I can 
see,” said Francis, with bitterness in his voice, “ that 
this is no work for you to be doing.” 

‘‘ Did they dare to say so? ” said Marjorie an- 
grily. 

“ No — oh, no. Don’t mind me, Marjorie. I’m 
a little tired and nervous, I expect — like 
Logan,” he ended, trying to smile. Will you 
come? ” 

“Why, of course!” said Marjorie instantly. 
“ And I thnk it’s sweet of them to want me! Tell 
them just to wait till I take my apron off, and I’ll 
be with them.” 

He went back and she followed him and sat 
down. At first she felt embarrassed, a little 
— she felt as if she were entertaining a 
large dinner-party, and most of them strangers. 
But Pennington, her unfailing comfort, was at one 


I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 193 

side of her, and the friendly, if inarticulate, Ba’tiste 
at the other; and presently she was chattering on, 
and liking it very much. 

None of the men had seen much of women for 
a long time. A couple of the better-class ones went 
into town, or what passed for it, occasionally, to such 
dances as the few women near by could get up. But 
that was practically all they saw of girls. And 
this “ little thing — it was a phrase they always 
used in speaking of her, till the very last — with her 
pretty face and pretty, shy ways, and excellent cook- 
ing — and more than all, her pluck — won them com- 
pletely. 

And when she finally, with obvious delight in 
their delight, produced the pudding, everything was 
over but the shouting, as they told her husband 
afterward. She had been a bit apprehensive about 
it, but it proved to be a good pudding, and large 
enough. Just large enough, though. They finished 
it to the very last crumb, sauce and all, and thanked 
her almost with tears. Pierre, it appeared, had not 
cooked with any art, he had merely seen to it that 
there was enough stoking material three times a day. 
From the moment of that meal on, anything that 


194 rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 
Marjorie wanted of those men, to the half of their 
weekly wages, was hers for the asking. 

She liked it very much. Everybody likes to be 
admired and appreciated. She could not help cast- 
ing a glance of triumph over at Francis, where he 
sat maritally at the other end of the table, the most 
silent person present. 

Pennington helped her clear away after supper. 
Indeed, competition to help Marjorie clear away 
was so strong that Pennington had to use his author- 
ity before the men settled down to their usual rou- 
tine of card-playing or lounging about on the grass 
outside. She accepted his help gratefully, for she 
was beginning to feel as if she had always known 
him. She did not think of him in the least as a 
man. He seemed more like an earthly providence. 

‘^You know, I really am very strong,” she ex- 
plained to him as he said something that betrayed 
his feeling that this work would be too much for 
her. “ I think I shall be able to do all this. Really, 
it isn’t anything more than lots of women have to 
do who keep boarders. And it isn’t for ” ’ 

She stopped herself. She had been on the point 
of saying, “And it isn’t for long, anyway.” She 


rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 195 

did not know what Francis had told the men about 
their plans, or his plans for her cooking, and she 
was resolved to be absolutely loyal to him. When 
she went he should have nothing to say about her 
but that she had behaved as well as any woman 
could. 

“ If you^re ready, we’ll go back to the cabin, 
Marjorie,” said Francis, appearing on the edge of 
the threshold, looking even more like a thundercloud 
than normal lately. 

She hung up the dishcloth, gave Pennington a 
last grateful smile, and followed Francis back. 

“ Pennington’s a good fellow,” he said abruptly 
as they gained their own porch, “ but I don’t want 
you to have too much to do with him. He’s kindly 
and all that, but he’s a remittance man.” 

Marjorie’s eyes opened wide with excitement at 
this. She had heard of remittance men, but never 
seen one before. 

‘^How perfectly thrilling! ” she said. 


CHAPTER X 


Francis looked at her as if she had said something 
very surprising. 

Thrilling? ” he said, apparently considering it 
the wrong adjective. 

She nodded. 

“ Why, yes. IVe read of remittance men all my 
life, but I never dreamed I’d meet one! And — I 
always wanted to know, Francis,” said she, as she 
opened the door and walked in and settled herself 
cozily on the window-seat. What does he remit? 
They never say.” 

“ He doesn’t remit,” explained Francis rather dis- 
gustedly, following her over and sitting down by 
her at the other corner of the seat. “ Other people 
do it.” 

“ ^ Curiouser and Curiouser! I begin to think 
I’m in Wonderland! ’” she quoted. “I think the 
easiest way for you to do will be just to tell me 
all about remittance men, the way you do a child 


196 


I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 197 
when it starts to ask questions. Just what are 
they, and do they all look like Pennington, and 
are they trained to be it, or does it come 
natural? ” 

“A remittance man,^’ Francis explained again, 
is a term, more or less, of disgrace. He is a man 
who has done something in his own country which 
makes his relatives wish him out of it. So they 
remit money to him as long as he stays away.’’ 

If he expected to make Marjorie feel shocked at 
PenningtojQ by this tale he was quite disappointed. 

“And does Pennington get money for staying 
away, besides what he helps you and gets? ” she 
demanded. “ What does he do with it all? ” 

“ I don’t suppose it’s a great deal,” said Francis 
reluctantly. 

“ Well, all I have to say is, I’m perfectly certain 
that if anybody’s paying Pennington to stay away 
from England, they’re some horrid kind of person 
that just is disagreeable, and doesn’t know his real 
worth. Why, Francis, he’s helped me learn the ways 
here, and looked after me, as if he was my mother. 
He’s exactly like somebody’s mother.” 

Francis could not help smiling a little. Ivlarjorie, 


198 I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 

when she wanted to be — sometimes when she did not 

want to be — was irresistible. 

“ But, Marjorie,” he began to explain to her very 
seriously, “however much he may seem like a 
mother, he isn’t one. He’s a man, though he’s rather 
an old one. And he did do things in England so 
he had to leave. I don’t want him to fall in love 
with you; it would be embarrassing for several 
reasons.” 

“ But why should he fall in love with me? ” she 
demanded innocently. “ Lots of people don’t.” 

“ But, Marjorie,” her husband remonstrated, 
“ they do. Look at Logan, now. No reason on 
earth would have brought him up here but being 
in love with you. You might as well admit it.” 

“All I ever did was to listen to him when he 
talked,” said Marjorie, shrugging one shoulder. She 
liked what Francis was saying, but she felt in honor 
bound to be truthful about such things. “ And be- 
sides you, there was only one other man ever asked 
me to marry him — I mean, not counting Logan, if 
you do count him. Oh, yes, and then there was 
another one yet, with a guitar. He always said he 
proposed to me. He wrote me a letter all mixed 


199 


rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 
up, about everything in the world; and I was awfully 
busy just then, selling tickets for a church fair of 
Cousin Anna’s. I never was any good selling tickets 
anyhow,” explained Marjorie, settling herself more 
nestlingly in her corner of the window-seat; “ and 
so when he said somewhere in the letter that any- 
thing he could ever do for me he would do on the 
wings of the wind, I wrote back and said yes, he 
could buy two tickets for the church fair. And, 
oh, but he was furious! He sent the check for the 
tickets with the maddest letter you ever saw; and 
he accused me of refusing him in a cold and ignor- 
ing manner. And I’d torn up the letter, the way I 
always do, and so I couldn’t prove anything about 
it to him. But he didn’t come to the fair. Ye-es, 
I suppose that was a proposal. The man ought to 
know, shouldn’t he? ” 

Francis was tired; he had a consciousness of 
having behaved unkindly that weighed him down 
and made for gloom. He had come in with Mar- 
jorie for the purpose of delivering an imposing 
warning. But he couldn’t help laughing. 

“ I suppose so,” he acknowledged. ‘‘ Never mind, 
Marjorie, you didn’t really want him, did you? ” 


200 


rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 

She shook her head. 

Oh, no. Nobody could. Or — wait, somebody 
must, because I think he’s married. But he wasn’t 
the kind a girl that cared what she got wanted.” 

But Francis went back to Pennington. 

“About Pennington,” he began again. “You 
don’t know how easy it is for you to let a man think 
you’re encouraging him, when you really aren’t say- 
ing a word or doing a thing, or think you aren’t. 
I want you to promise me you’ll be very careful 
where he’s concerned, even cold.” 

“Cold! ” she said indignantly. “But I’m mar- 
ried! You seem to forget that! ” 

Francis had not forgotten it in the least. He 
forgot it all too little for his own comfort, he might 
have told her. But he was rebuked. 

“ I didn’t knov7 you went on the principle that 
you had to act exactly like a regular married 
woman,” he apologized with meekness. 

“ I do,” she said shortly. 

He rose and went over to where the banjo lay and 
brought it back to her. It was growing dusk now 
in the little cabin. 

“ Play for me, and sing, won’t you, Marjorie? ” 


rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 201 
he asked abruptly. I haven’t heard you for a long 
time.” 

In Marjorie’s mind there arose the memory of 
that boyish, loving little note that she had found 
under the banjo, and for a minute her throat clutched 
so that she couldn’t answer. She had moments of 
being so intolerably sorry for Francis that it hurt; 
quite irrational moments, when he seemed to need 
it not at all. This was one. 

Yes,” she said, pulling herself together. That 
is, if you will take my word for it that I have no 
designs on poor old Mr. Pennington.” 

“ Of course I know you haven’t,” he said. “ It 
was the other way about that I was afraid of.” 

“ His having designs on me? ” 

She laughed aloud as she began tuning her strings. 
It did seem like the funniest thing she had ever 
heard. The picture of Pennington, girt with a sack 
for an apron, with that plump, quaint face of his, 
and those kindly, fussy ways, drying cups for her 
and having designs while he did it — it was enough 
to make even Logan laugh, and he had never been 
known to be amused by anything that wasn’t intel- 
lectual humor. 


202 I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 
“ Just a-wearyin’ for you,” 

she began, in her soft little sympathetic voice, that 
wasn’t much good for anything but just this sort of 
thing, but could pull the heartstrings out of you at it, 
and S 2 mg it through. She went on after that without 
beihg asked, just because she liked it. She knew 
where the simple chords were in the dark, and she 
sang everything she wanted to, forgetting finally 
Francis, and the woods, and everything else in the 
world except the music and the old things she was 
singing. 

When she had finally done, after an hour or so, 
and laid the banjo across her lap and leaned back 
with a little laugh, saying “There! You must be 
tired by this time! ” Francis rose with scarcely a 
thank-you, and walked out of the door. 

“ I want a turn in the air before I come to bed,” 
he said. 

Marjorie said nothing. She was sleepy, as usual 
— would she never get over being sleepy up here? — 
and she laid the instrument on the floor and stretched 
out thoughtlessly on the window-seat, instead of 
going off to bed as she had been intending to do. 


I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 203 
As for her husband, he walked across the veranda 
straight into a group of his listening men. The 
music had drawn them over, and, regardless of 
mosquitoes, they were sitting about on the steps, 
liking the concert. 

“We owe you a vote of thanks for importing that 
little wife of yours, Ellison,” said Pennington, get- 
ting up and stretching himself widely in the moon- 
light. “ Maybe if I do some more dishes for her, 
she’ll come and sing for us when she knows it, some- 

j time soon.” 

1 Francis had an irrational wish to hit Pennington. 
But there was no reason why he should. Penning- 
ton’s particular kind of flippancy was merely a re- 
sult of his having been, in those far days before he 
was a remittance man, an Oxford graduate. So 
was his soft and charmingly inflected voice. But, 
quite reasonlessly, it was all Francis could do to 
respond with the politeness which is due to your 
almost irreplaceable second-in-command on a rush 
job. His manners once made, he decided that he 
didn’t want the air, after all. He faced about, say- 
ing good-night to the risen men, who responded 
jovially or respectfully, according to their temper- 


204 I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 

aments, and returned to the cabin where he was, 
for all they knew, living an idyllic life with the 
wife he adored and who adored him. 

He went over, drawn in spite of himself, to the 
window-seat where Marjorie lay. There was enough 
moonlight to see her dimly, and he could tell that 
she had, all in a minute, fallen asleep. She looked 
very young and tired and childish in the shadows, 
with her lips just parted, and her hands out and 
half open at her sides. 

‘^Marjorie! Marjorie, dear! ” he said. “Wake 
up! It’s time you were in bed.” 

He spoke to her affectionately, scarcely knowing 
that he said it. She was very tired, and she did 
not wake till he put his hand on her shoulder. 
Even then she just moved a little, and turned back 
to her old position. 

He finally bent and lifted her to a sitting position, 
but she only lay against him, heavy still with sleep. 

“ Don’t want to get up,” she murmured, like a 
child. So finally he had to do as he had done the 
night he brought her home, pick her up bodily 
and lay her on her own bed. Her arms fell from 
his shoulders as he straightened himself from lay- 


rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 205 
ing her down. 'Night,” she said, still sleepily 
and half-affectionately; and Francis did not 
her good-night. But he did want to badly. Francis, 
unlike Marjorie, was not sleeping well these nights. 

But then he was used to his work and she waa 
not used to hers. He called her quite unemotionally 
next morning, and she rose and went through her 
routine as usual. All the camp watched its mascot 
apprehensively, as if she might break — well, not 
every one, for two of them were tough old souls 
who thought that hard work was what women were 

fur.” But, aside from these unregenerates, they did 
more. Fired by Pennington's example of unremit- 
ting help, they did everything for her that thought 
could suggest. They brought her in posies for the 
table; they swept out the cabin for her; they dried 
her dishes in desperate competition; they filled the 
kerosene stoves so thoroughly that there was 
always a dripping trail of oil on the floor, and Pen- 
nington had to lay down the law about it; they 
ate what she fed them gladly, and even sometimes 
forbore to ask for more out of a wish to seem 
mannerly. 

And Marjorie liked it to the core. The lighten- 


2 o 6 rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 

ing of the work was a help, and it made things 
so that she was not more than healthfully tired, 
though sometimes she felt that she was more than 
that; but, being a woodland queen, as Pennington 
called it, was pleasantest of all. She came to feel 
as the time went on, there alone in the clearing with 
them, that they were all her property. She mended 
their clothes for them, she settled their disputes, 
she heard their confidences and saw the pictures 
of their sweethearts and wives, or, sometimes, pho- 
tographs of movie queens who were the dream-ideals 
of these simple souls. Sometimes she went out to 
the place where they worked, before the work moved 
too far away for her to reach it in a short time. 
And, curiously enough, she found that she was not 
lonely, did not miss New York, and — it seemed to 
her that it was a rather shocking way to feel — she 
did not in the least feel a “ lack of woman’s nursing, 
or dearth of woman’s tears.” 

She got along excellently without Lucille, Cousin 
Anna, and the girls in the office. And, thinking it 
over sometimes at twilight, in those rare moments 
when there weren’t from one to three of the men 
grouped adoringly around her, and Francis wasn’t 


I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 207 
chaperoning her silently in the background, she 
felt that the work was a small price to pay for 
the pleasantness of the rest of her life there. Al- 
ways before she had been a cog in the machinery, 
wherever she had been. At Cousin Anna’s she was 
a little girl, loved and dominated. With Lucille 
she was free, but Lucille, in compensation, helped 
herself to the ungrudgingly given foreground. But 
here she was lady and mistress, and pet besides. 
In short, the punishment Francis had laid out for 
her was only a punishment to him. She could see 
that he felt guilty by spells. She thought, too, 
that he had times of being fond of her. How much 
they meant she could not tell. But in spite of his 
warnings she became better and better friends with 
Pennington, always exactly, at least as far as she 
was concerned, as if he were a maiden aunt of great 
kindness and experience. Indeed, Pennington, she 
thought, was what kept her from missing girls so. 

He never told her anything about himself. He 
might or might not have been a remittance man; 
but he mentioned no remittances, at least. Once 
he spoke of his childhood, the kind of childhood she 
had read sometimes in English children’s books, not 


2o 8 rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 
like her own prim American suburban memories of 
Sunday-school and being sent to school and store, 
and sometimes playing in her back yard with other 
little girls. He had had a pony, and brothers and 
sisters to play with, and a governess, she gathered; 
and an uncle who was an admiral, and came home 
once to them in his full uniform, as a treat, so they 
could see how he looked in it. And there had 
been a nurse, and near by was a park where the 
tale went that there were goblins. But it all must 
have been very long ago, she thought, because Pen- 
nington looked forty and over. And all his stories 
stopped short before he was ten. After that he went 
to Eton, he told her, and told her no more. 

She did not ask. She liked him, but, after all, 
he was not an important figure in her life. The 
goal she never forgot was Francis’s admission that 
she was an honorable woman; and, underneath that, 
Francis’s missing her terribly when she was through 
and left. Still, when Pennington would come and 
demand tea from her of a Sunday, and she would 
sit in her little living-room, or out on the veranda, 
with the quaint yellow tea-set that was a part of 
the furnishings, and pour it for him and one or 


I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 209 
two of the other men, she would like having him 
about. He talked as interestingly as Logan, but 
not as egotistically. She felt as if she were quite 
a wonderful person when he sat on the step below 
her, and surrounded her with a soft deference that 
was almost caressing, but not quite. And in spite 
of Francis’s warnings she made more and more of 
a friend of him. 

The explosion came one Sunday afternoon in 
June. She came out on the veranda, as usual, 
with her tea-tray, about four, and waited for her 
court. Peggy came over once in awhile on Sundays, 
too. Logan never came. Peggy had never said 
any more about him since her one outburst, but 
Marjorie knew that he was ill yet, and being nursed 
by the O’Maras. This day no Peggy appeared. 
Indeed, nobody appeared for some time, and Mar« 
jorie began to think of putting away the tea-things 
and considering the men’s supper. And then, just 
as she had come to this resolve, Pennington came 
through the woods. 

He was not sauntering in a seemingly aimless 
manner, as he usually did. He was walking straight 
for her, as if she were something he had been aim- 


aio 


I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 
ing for for hours. And he did not drop at her 
feet negligently on the steps, as he usually did, and 
call her some fanciful name like “ Queen of the 
Woodlands,” or Lady Marjorie.” He sat erectly 
on a chair across from her, and Marjorie bethought 
herself that he was very much like a curate making 
a call. The kindly expression was always on his 
face, even when he was most deeply in earnest, and 
he was apparently in earnest to-day. 

“ I stopped the other men from coming,” began 
Pennington with no preface. “ I wanted to have a 
long talk with you. I want to tell you a story.” 

‘‘ I wish you would,” she said, though she had 
had so many scenes of late that, without any idea 
what was coming, a little tremor of terror crept 
around her heart. She leaned back in her rustic 
rocker, there on the veranda, and looked at him 
in her innocent, friendly fashion. He paused a little 
before he began. 

“ Once upon a time,” he began abruptly, ^ there 
was a man who had a very fair start in life. His 
people saw to it that everything was smooth for 
him — too smooth, perhaps. He didn’t realize that 
he could ever be in a position where they wouldn’t 


rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 21 r 
be able to straighten things out for him. He was 
a decent enough chap; weak, perhaps, but kind, at 
least. He went to school and college, and finally 
took orders, and was given a living in a county near 
where his people lived. Life went along easily 
enough for him, and perhaps a bit stupidly. Too 
stupidly. He got bored by it. So after a while 
he gambled. He played the stock-market. Pres- 
ently he used some money that was not his — that 
had been intrusted to him by another. He lost 
that. So he had to give up everything — home, 
friends, profession, country — and go and live in 
a strange country. His people, good always, 
straightened things out for him, at a great sacrifice; 
but they made it a condition that he should stay 
where he was. Time went on, and things were for- 
gotten. And the people who had made him promise 
not to return died. They left him, in dying, some 
money. Not a great deal, but enough to keep him 
comfortably. And he didn’t know what to do. He 
was happy, for the first time in his life, with a 
little friend he had found, some one almost like 
a daughter, some one who seemed, in humble ways, 
to need him to help her in what wasn’t a very 


212 rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 
easy part of her life. So he stayed yet a little 
longer. And presently he found that he was in 
danger of something happening. He had never been 
very good at making himself feel as he wished to 
feel, or at holding his feelings to what they should 
be, let us say. And his feelings for this little daugh- 
ter were not quite, he was afraid, like a father’s. 
But he still did not know what to do, Marjorie. 
She would never care, and there were reasons why 
be did not want or expect her to. It was only that 
be wondered which was right — which he ought to 
do.” . 

Pennington stopped. 

Marjorie colored up. 

^‘What — what do you mean? Why — why do 
you tell me about it? ” 

“ Because,” said Pennington, I would like to 
know what you think that man ought to do. Ought 
be to go back home, against his people’s wish, but 
where he belongs, and try to pick up the rest of 
bis life there, or do you think that the need of 
him over here is enough to counterbalance the dan- 
ger he runs? You see, it’s rather a problem.” 

Marjorie was a perfectly intelligent girl. She 


I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 213 
knew very well that Pennington was, at last, telling 
her the outlines of his own pitiful story. And he 
was leaving the decision in her hands. 

She sat quietly for awhile, and tried to think. 
It was hard to think, because there was a queer, 
hazy feeling in her head, and her hands were hot. 
She had felt unusually excited and energetic and 
gay earlier in the day, but that was all gone, and 
only the hazy feeling left. She did not want to 
move, or, particularly, to speak. She wondered if 
a trip she had made that afternoon before to a little 
swampy place, where she had sat and strung berries 
for an hour, had been bad for her. 

But there was Pennington — he looked very large, 
suddenly, and then seemed to fade away far off 
for a minute, and have to be focused with an effort 
— and he had to be answered. 

I think,” she said hesitatingly, “ that he ought 
to do what seemed to him right, without thinking 
of his feelings, or — or any one else’s.” 

But that’s just the trouble. He couldn’t see 
which was right.” 

Marjorie tried to focus harder than ever. She 
wanted to be unselfish, and tell him the thing that 


214 I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 
was right to do, at any cost — though she had not 
realized how much Pennington’s help and society 
had been to her. She felt a terror at the idea 
of his going, the more because she felt ill. But 
that didn’t count — that mustn’t count. You have 
no right to let a man stay where he may fall in 
love with you, merely because you need him for 
a maiden aunt or something of the sort. And that 
was the ultimate and entire extent of her affection 
for him, strong though it had come to be. 

“ I think — I think that man had better go back 
to the place where he had really belonged at first,” 
she said in a low voice. No matter how much 
the girl missed him, or needed him, she had no right 
to want him to be hurt by staying near her.” 

You really think that? ” he said. 

“Yes,” she answered. And then incoherently, 
“ Oh, Mr. Pennington, I do want to be good ! ” 

She meant that she had done enough wrong, in 
acting as she had toward Francis in the first place. 
She felt now, very strongly, that all the trouble 
had come from her cowardice when Francis came 
home. She should have shut her teeth and gone 
through the thing, no matter what her personal feel- 


I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 215 
ings had been at first. It would all have come out 
right then. She knew now that she and Francis, 
the plunge once taken, could have stood each other. 
And she would have kept her faith. She had learned 
the meaning of honor. 

“ You are good,’’ said Pennington in a moved 
tone. “ Then — I have my answer. Yes — I’ll go 
back.” 

She leaned her heavy head on the chair-back 
again. He seemed once more suddenly remote. 

“I — I wish you weren’t going,” she said, only 
half conscious of what she said. 

He leaned forward, suddenly moved, and caught 
her hand hard. Still in that dream, she felt him 
kiss it. She did not care. And then, still in the 
dream, Francis’s quick tread up the steps, and his 
sharp voice — 

And I believed in you I ” 


CHAPTER XI 


She looked at him in a blind sort of way. His 
words made only a hazy impression; but neither of 
•the men could know that. 

“ Believed in me? ” she echoed, smiling faintly. 

Why, did you? ” 

“ Yes,^’ said Francis with a concentrated fury that 
reached even her confused senses. “ But I never 
will again! I thought — I was beginning to think 
— you were the sort of woman you said. But you’re 
just a flirt. Any man is better than the one you’re 
married to.” 

I — I think you want me to go,” she said, try- 
ing to see him. She could see two Francises, as a 
matter of fact, neither of them clearly. 

“ Yes, I do. Either of these men you’ve befooled 
can see you on your way. And I’ll start divorce 
proceedings, or you may, immediately.” 

He said more than that; but that was all she could 
get. The words hurt her, in spite of their lack 


216 


I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 217 
of meaning. Francis hated her; he thought she 
was a bad girl, who never kept her word. And she 
wasn’t. 

“ I — I want to be good,” she said aimlessly, as 
she had said to Pennington a little earlier. I ” — 
she lost the thread again — I’ll go.” 

She rose, dropping the cup and saucer on her 
knee, and not stopping to pick them up. She caught 
hold of the doorpost to carry her in, and dropped 
down on a seat inside. It was not that she was 
weak, but she felt giddy. She wondered again if 
it was the swamp. Probably. She finally made her 
way back to her own room, mixed herself some 
spirits of ammonia and took it, and sat down to 
pull herself together. Through the wooden parti- 
tion she could hear the furious voices of the 
men on the porch outside. She wondered if 
Francis would say more dreadful things to her 
while he took her over in the side-car. She hoped 
not. 

Presently the dizziness departed for a few minutes, 
and she tried to pack. She did not seem able to 
manage it. If she was allowed to stay at the Lodge 
with the O ’Maras, she could send Peggy over to 


2 i 8 rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 

gather up her things. Yes, that would be the best 

way to do. 

She pinned on her hat and drew her cloak around 
her, just as she was, and came out. Pennington 
and Francis were standing up, facing her, and hav- 
ing a quarrel which might last some time. 

“ I’m ready,” she said weakly. 

She knew she should have stood up there, and 
told Francis how unkind and unjust and bad-tem- 
pered and jealous he was, and defend herself from 
his accusations. But she was too tired to do it; 
and besides, words seemed so far away, and feelings 
seemed far away, too. Francis and the work at the 
cabin and Pennington, with his kind, plump, rueful 
face, and even the O’Maras and Logan, seemed sud- 
denly unreal and of little account. The only thing 
that really mattered was a chance to go somewhere 
and lie down and sleep. Perhaps she could lean 
back a little in the side-car as he took her over. 

Francis broke off short in what he was saying, 
and went without looking at her toward the place 
where he kept his motor-cycle. Perhaps he thought 
that it did not matter, now, whether he left her with 
Pennington or not. 


I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 219 

Pennington, for his part, turned around — he had 
been standing so that his back was toward her — 
and began to speak. Marjorie thought he was say- 
ing something to the effect that he was very sorry 
that he had made this trouble for her, and that he 
had been trying to explain; and thought he could 
make Francis hear reason when he had cooled off. 

“ It doesn’t really matter,” she said wearily. 
“ Only tell him to hurry, because I’m — so — sleepy.” 

She sank into the chair where she had been sit- 
ting before Francis appeared, and leaned back and 
shut her eyes. Pennington, with a concerned look 
on his face, came nearer her at that, and looked 
down at her, reaching down to feel her pulse. She 
moved her hand feebly away. 

“ Francis — wouldn’t like it,” she said; and that 
was, the last thing she remembered distinctly, though 
afterwards when she tried she seemed to recall hear- 
ing Pennington, very far off in the distance, calling 
peremptorily, Ellison! Ellison! Come here at 
once! ” 

She wondered faintly why Pennington should 
want to hurry him up. It was about this time that 
she quietly slipped sidewise from her chair, and 


2 20 I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 

was in a little heap on the veranda before he could 
turn and catch her, or Francis could respond to 
the summons. 

“ This is what you’ve done,” was what Penning- 
ton said quietly when Francis reappeared. He did 
not offer to touch Marjorie or pick her up. 

Francis flung himself down on his knees beside 
his wife. Then he looked up at Pennington, with 
a last shade of suspicion in his eyes. 

What do you think it is? ” he asked. Is she 
really fainting? ” 

You young fool, no! ” said Pennington. “ She’s 
ill.” 

‘‘111! ” said Francis, and gathered her up and 
laid her on the settee at the other end of the porch. 
“ What’s the matter, do you think? Is it serious? ” 

His words were quiet enough, but there was a 
note of anguish in his voice which made Penning- 
ton sorry for him in spite of himself. But he did 
not show much mercy. 

“ It is probably overwork,” he said. “ We’ve all 
done what we could to spare her, but a child like 
this shouldn’t be put at drudgery, even to satisfy the 
most jealous or selfish man. You’ve had a china 


I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 221 
cup, my lad, and you’ve used it as if it was tin. 
And it’s broken, that’s all.” 

Francis looked down at Marjorie, holding her 
head in his arms. It lay back limply. Her eyes 
were half open, and her heart, as he put his hand 
over it, was galloping. Her cheeks were beginning 
to be scarlet, and her hand, when he reached down 
and touched it, burned. He looked up at Penning- 
ton with an unconscious appeal, unmindful of the 
older man’s harsh words. 

“ Do you think she’ll die? ” he asked. 

“ I have no way of knowing. If she does, you 
have the consolation of knowing that you’ve done 
what you could toward it.” 

^‘Oh, my God, don’t, Pennington!” cried out 
Francis, clutching Marjorie tighter unconsciously. 

It’s as true as gospel. But let up now. Get 
somebody. Do something, for heaven’s sake! You 
know about medicine a little, don’t you? ” 

Take her inside and put her to bed,” Penning- 
ton commanded shortly. '' I’ll take your motor-cycle 
and go for Mother O’Mara. I can get a doctor from 
there by to-morrow, perhaps.” 

Francis gathered the limp little body up again 


2 22 I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 
without a word. Only he turned at the door for a 
last appeal. 

“ Can’t you tell at all what it is? ” 

Fever, I think. She’s caught malarial fever, 
perhaps. She wouldn’t have done if she’d been 
stronger. Take her in.” 

So Francis carried his wife over the threshold, 
into the little brown room he had decked for her 
so long ago, and laid her down again. Her head 
fell back on the pillow, and her hands lay as he 
dropped them. He stood back and looked at her, 
a double terror in his heart. She would never love 
him again. How could she? And she would die 
— surely she would die, and he had killed her. 

I’m — going,” she said very faintly, as a sleep- 
talker speaks. She was not conscious of what she 
said, but it was the last straw for Francis. He had 
not slept nor eaten lately, and he had worked double 
time all day to keep his mind from the state of things, 
ever since he had brought her back. So perhaps it 
was not altogether inexcusable that he flung himself 
on the floor by the bedside and broke down. 

He was aroused after awhile by the touch of 
Marjorie’s hand. He lifted his head, thinking she 


I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 223 
had come to and touched him knowingly. But he 
saw that it was only that she was tossing a little, 
with the restlessness of the fever, and his heart 
went down again. 

He pulled himself up from the bedside, and went 
doggedly at his work of undressing her and putting 
her to bed. 

She was as easy to handle as a child; and once 
or twice, when he had to lift or turn her in the 
process of undressing, he could feel how light she 
was, and that she was thinner. She had always been 
a little thing, but the long weeks of work had made 
her almost too thin — not too thin for her own tastes, 
because, like all the rest of the women of the pres- 
ent, she liked it; but thin enough to give Francis 
a fresh pang of remorse. He felt like a slave- 
driver. 

When he had finished his task, he stood back, 
and wondered if there was anything else he could 
do before Pennington came back with Mrs. O’Mara, 
and with or without a doctor. He felt helpless, and 
as if he had to stand there and watch her die. He 
got water and tried to make her drink it — ineffectu- 
ally — he filled a hot water bottle and brought it 


224 I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 
in, and then thought better of it. She had a fever 
already. Then he thought of bathing her in cold 
water; but he could not bring himself to do that. 
He had already done enough that she would hate 
him for, in the way of undressing her. He must 
never tell her he had done that. . . . But she 
would hate him anyway. So he ended by sitting 
miserably down on the floor beside her, and waiting 
the interminable hours that the time seemed until 
the others returned. 

He had expected Mrs. O’Mara to reproach him, 
as Pennington had, as being the person to blame 
for Marjorie’s state. But the dear soul, comforting 
as always, said nothing of the sort. She said very 
little of any sort, indeed; she merely laid off the 
bonnet and cloak she had come in, and went straight 
at her work of looking after Marjorie. Only on her 
way she stopped to give Francis a comforting pat 
on the shoulder. 

It’s not so bad but it might be worse,” she said. 

Anybody might git them fevers without a stroke 
of work done. An^ she’s young an’ strong.” 

Francis looked up at her in mute gratitude from 
where he sat. 


I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 225 
An’ now clear out, lie down and rest, down on 
the couch or annywhere ye like, till I see what’s to 
be done to this girl,” she went on. 

He went out without a word, and sat down on 
the window-seat, where the banjo lay, still, and 
picked it up mechanically. He could see Marjorie, 
now, with it in her hands, singing to it for the 
men — or, sometimes, just for him. How gay she 
had been through everything, and how plucky, and 
how sweet! And just because she was gdiy he had 
thought she was selfish and fickle, and didn’t care. 
And because she had never said anything about how 
hard the work was, he had thought — he could for- 
give himself even less for this — ^that it wasn’t hard. 
Looking back, he could see not one excuse for him- 
self except in his carrying her off. That might have 
worked all right, if he could have kept his temper. 
He let his mind stray back over what might have 
been; suppose he had accepted Logan’s following 
her up here as just what it was — the whim of a 
man in love with Marjorie. Suppose he had believed 
that Pennington could kiss his wife’s hand without 
meaning any harm; suppose, in fine, that he had 
believed in Marjorie’s desire and intention to do 


226 I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 

right, even if she had been a coward for a few 

minutes to begin with? 

Then — why, then — 

By this time, perhaps, he could have won her 
back. If he had not laid down the law to her — 
if he had not put her to the test. What business 
had a man in love to make terms, anyhow? It was 
for him to accept what terms Marjorie had chosen 
to make for him. 

He flung himself down on his knees by the win- 
dow-seat, heedless of any one who might come or go. 

“ Oh, God,” prayed Francis passionately, as he 
did everything. Give me another chance! Let 
her get well, and give me one little chance then to 
Lave her forgive me! I don’t care what else hap- 
pens if that only does! ” 

He did not know how long he knelt there, pray- 
ing with such intensity that he sprang aside when 
some one touched him on the shoulder. 

“ She’s goin’ to be all right in the long run,” said 
Mrs. O’Mara. I gev’ her a wee drink o’ water, 
an’ she kem to herself fur a minute. An’ I says, 
‘ Me dear, where did ye git yer fever? ’ An’ she 
says, ^ The swamp, I think. Don’t I have to travel 


rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 227 
to-day? I’m in bed.’ An’ I says, ^ Not to-day nor 
anny day till ye want, me child,’ and she turns 
over an’ snuggles down like a lamb. An’ I’ve 
sponged her off with cool water, an’ she feels bet- 
ter, though she’s off agin, an’ I’m afraid the fever’ll 
be runnin’ up on us before the doctor can git here.” 

“ You mean she isn’t sensible now? ” demanded 
Francis, whose eyes had lighted up with hope when 
she began to speak. 

^‘Well, not so’s ye could talk to her. An’ ye 
might excite her. Them they loves does often.” 

“ Then I wouldn’t,” said Francis recklessly. 
“ Oh, Mother O’Mara, I’ve been such a brute ” 

“ Hush, hush now, don’t ye be tellin’ me. Sure 
We’re all brutes wanst in awhile. Ye feel that way 
because the child’s sick. Now go out and watch 
fer the doctor, or do annything else that’ll amuse 
ye.” 

He obeyed her as if he were a little boy. He was 
so miserable that he would have done what any one 
told him just then — if Logan, even, with his cane 
and his superciliousness, had given him a direction 
he would probably have obeyed it blindly. 

Mrs. O’Mara went back to the sick-room. How 


228 rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 
much she knew of the situation she never told. But 
Peggy was not a secretive person, and Peggy had 
arrived at a point with Logan where he told her 
a good deal, if she coaxed. They never got it out 
of the old lady, at any rate. 

Marjorie was quieter, but still not herself. Mrs. 
O’Mara, who was an experienced nurse, did not 
like the way she had collapsed so completely. She 
was afraid it was going to be a hard illness, and 
she knew Francis was breaking his heart over it. 

“ Still it may be a blessin’ in a way,” she said 
half aloud. “ You never can tell in this world o^ 
grief and danger. I wonder has she people besides 
Mr. Francis. TheyVe never either of them 
said.” 

The doctor came and went, and Monday morn- 
ing dawned, when Francis had to go to work whether 
or no. And Pennington quietly took over Marjorie’s 
duties again, and the men tiptoed up to the cabin 
where she lay, and asked about her anxiously, and 
young Peggy came over and took turns with her 
mother in the nursing, and Logan, much more robust 
and tanned than he had been in several years of 
New York life in heated apartments, came with 


rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 229 
her and sat on the porch waiting till she came out; 
and Francis saw him there, and thought nothing of 
it except that he was grateful to him for being in- 
terested in Marjorie. 

He realized now that it was all he need ever 
have thought. But he realized so many things now, 
when it might be too late! 

The days went on relentlessly. Finally they de- 
cided to send for her cousin, the only relative she 
had. Francis was a little doubtful as to the wisdom 
of this, for he knew that Marjorie had never been 
very happy with her cousin, but it was one of those 
things which seem to have to be done. And just 
as they had come to this resolution; a resolution 
which felt to Francis like giving up all hope, Mar- 
jorie took a little turn for the better. 

It was not much to see. She was a little quieter, 
that was all, and the nursing did not have to be 
so intensive. Mrs. O’Mara and Peggy did not feel 
that they had to sit with her all the time; there 
were periods when she was left alone. Francis felt 
more bitterly than anything else that he had to go 
on with his work, instead of staying in the house 
every moment, but it was better for him. He would 


230 I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 
have driven the O’Maras mad, they told him 
frankly, walking up and down, looking repentant. 
Peggy was not quite softened to him yet; but the 
older woman was so sorry for him that any feelings 
she may have had about the way he had behaved 
were swallowed up in sympathy. 

^^And it isn’t as if he weren’t gettin’ his come- 
uppance, Peg,” she reminded her intolerant young 
daughter. “ Sure annything he made her suffer he’s 
payin’ for twice over and again to that.” 

‘‘And a very good thing, too,” retorted Peggy, 
who was just coming off duty, and casting an eye 
toward the window to see where Logan was. He 
was exactly where she wished, waiting with what, 
for him, was eagerness, to go off through the woods 
with her. 

“ I suppose, now ye’ve a man trailin’ ye, there’s 
nothin’ ye don’t know,” said her mother. “And 
him a heretic, if not a heathen itself. I’ve only to 
say to ye, keep yer own steps clean, Peggy.” 

“ He is a heathen — he doesn’t believe a blessed 
thing; he said so himself! ” said Peggy with what 
sounded like triumph. “ The more reason for me 
to convert him, poor dear ! Empty things are easier 


rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 231 
filled than full ones. If he was like them in there, 
with a religion of his own, I wouldn’t have a show. 
But as it is, I have my hopes.” 

“Oh, it’s converting him you are! Tell that to 
the pigs! ” said her mother scornfully. “ And now 
go on; I suppose you’re taking a prayer book and 
a rosary along with you in that picnic basket.” 

“ No,” said Peggy reluctantly. “ I’m softening 
his heart first.” 

She had the grace to giggle a little as she said 
it, and the O’Mara sense of humor rode triumphant 
over both of them then, and they parted, laughing. 
Francis, entering on one of his frequent flying trips 
from work to see how Marjorie was, felt as if they 
were heartless. 

Mrs. O’Mara, at the sight of his tired, unhappy 
young face, sobered down with one of her quick 
Irish transitions. 

“ Ah, sure now it’s the best of news. The doc- 
tor’s been, and fie says she’s better. So it won’t 
be necessary to send after the old aunt or cousin 
or whatever, that ye say she wasn’t crazy over. 
Come in an’ see her.” 

Francis, a new hope in his heart, tiptoed into 


232 rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 
the little brown bedroom where Marjorie lay. It 
was too much to hope that she would know him. 
She had been either delirious or asleep — under nar- 
cotics — through the days of her fever. And once 
or twice when she had spoken rationally, it had 
never been Francis who had happened to be near 
at the time. 

She lay quite quietly, with her eyes shut, and 
her long lashes trailing on her cheeks. When Fran- 
cis came in she opened her eyes as if it was a trouble 
to make that much effort. She was very weak. 
But she looked at him intelligently, and even lifted 
one hand a little from the coverlet, as if she wanted 
to be polite and welcome him. He had been warned 
not to make any fuss or say anything exciting, if 
this should come; so he only sat down across from 
her and tried to speak naturally. 

Do you know me, Marjorie? he asked, trying 
to make his voice sound as it always sounded. But 
it was a little hoarse. 

She spoke, in a thread of a voice, that yet had 
a little mockery in it. She seemed to have taken 
things up where she dropped them. 

“Yes, thank you. You’re my sort of husband. 


rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 233 
This — this is really too bad of me, Francis. But, 
anyway, it was your swamp! ” 

Just the old, mocking, smiling Marjorie, or her 
shadow. But it did not make him angry now; 
it seemed so piteous that he should have brought 
her to this. The swamp faded to nothingness as 
a cause of her illness when he compared it to his 
own behavior. 

Marjorie,’^ he asked, very gently so as not to 
disturb her, “would it be too exciting if I talked 
to you a little bit about things, and told you how 
sorry I was? ” 

“ Why — no,’’ she said weakly, shutting her 
eyes. 

“ I was wrong, from start to finish,” he said im- 
petuously. “ I’m sorry. I want you to forgive 
me.” 

“ Why, certainly,” she said, so indifferently that 
his heart sank. It did not occur to him that he 
had never said that he cared for her at all. 

“ Is there anything I could get you? ” he asked 
futilely as he felt. 

“ I’d like to see Mr. Pennington. He was kind 


to me.' 


234 


rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 

“ Marjorie, Marjorie, won’t you ever forgive me 
for the way I acted? ” 

Oh, yes,” she said, lying with shut eyes, so 
quiet that her lips scarcely moved when she talked. 
“ I said so. But you haven’t been kind. It’s like 
— don’t you know, when you get a little dog used 
to being struck it gets so it cowers when you speak 
to it, no matter if you aren’t going to strike it that 
time. I don’t want to be hurt any more. I don’t 
love Pennington — he’s too funny-looking, and 
awfully old. But he was kind — ^he never hurt my 
feelings. ...” 

She spobe without much inflection, and using as 
few words as she could. When she had finished 
she still lay there, as silent and out of Francis’s 
reach as if she were dead. He tiptoed out with 
a sick feeling that everything was over, which he 
had never had before. She was so remote. She 
cared so little about an5dbing. 

He went back to work, and told Pennington that 
Marjorie wanted to see him. When the day was 
over he returned to the cabin again, and found 
Mrs. O’Mara on duty once more. Pennington sat 
by Marjorie, holding her hand in his, and speaking 


I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 235 
to her occasionally. Francis looked at him, and 
spoke to him courteously. Pennington smiled at 
him, and stayed where he was. Marjorie, Mrs. 
O’Mara said, seemed to cling to him, and his pres- 
ence did her good. And— she broke it as gently 
as she could — though the patient was on the 
road to getting well now, she was disturbed by 
his coming in and out. She seemed afraid of 
him. 

Francis took it very quietly. After that he only 
came to the bedroom door to ask, and stepped as 
softly as he could, so that she would not even know 
he had been there. And time went on, and she got 
better, and presently could be dressed in soft, loose, 
fluffy things, and lie out on the veranda during the 
warmest part of the day, and see people for a little 
while each. It was about this time that Francis 
went to sleep at the bunk-house. 

‘‘ Why doesn’t Francis ever come to see me? ” 
she asked finally. There are a great many things 
I want to know about.” 

Pennington, whom she had asked, told her gently. 

“ We thought — the physician thought — that he 
upset you a little when you were beginning to be 


236 I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 

better. He is staying away on purpose. Would 

you like to see him? ” 

Yes, I think I would,” she said. Can Peggy 
come talk to me? ” 

Peggy could, of course. She came dashing up, 
from some sylvan nook where she had been secluded, 
presumably with Logan, fell on Marjorie with 
hearty good-will and many kisses, and demanded 
to know what she could do. 

I — I want to see Francis and talk to him about 
a lot of things,” said Marjorie, and I thought 
perhaps if you’d get me a mirror and a little bit 
of powder, and ” 

“ Say no more! ” said Peggy. “ I know what 
you want as well as if you’d told me all. I’ll be out 
in a minute with everything in the world.” 

She returned with her arms full of toilet things, 
and for fifteen minutes helped Marjorie look pretty. 
She finished by brushing out her hair and arranging 
it loosely in curls, with a big ribbon securing it, 
like Mary Pickford or one of her rivals. She 
touched Marjorie’s face with a little perfume to 
flush it, and draped her picturesquely against the 
back of the long chair, with a silk shawl over her 


rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 237 
instead of the steamer rug which Mrs. O’Mara^ 
less artistic than utilitarian, had provided. 

There,” she said, “ you look like a doll, or 
an angel, or anything else out of a storybook. Now 
V\\ get Francis.” 


CHAPTER XII 


Marjorie waited, with a quietness which was only 
outward, for Francis. She did not even know 
whether he would come; she had only seen him 
once; he had said he was sorry for the way he had 
acted, and asked her to forgive him, but then it 
wasn’t the first time he had done that. 

“ It’s getting to be just a little morning custom 
of his,” said Marjorie to herself, trying to laugh. 
But she was in earnest about seeing him. Away 
down deep in her she was not quite sure why she 
wanted to. She was not angry with him — she 
seemed to herself past that. Of course, there were 
things to arrange. 

It seemed like a sorry ending to it all. She had 
meant to ride triumphantly through the work, and 
walk off leaving a crushed Francis behind her; 
and make such a success of something back in New 
York that he would spend years being very, very 
sorry. . . . Well, he did seem sorry. But it was 

238 


rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 239 
only because he felt guilty about her being ill, not, 
so far as she could tell, because he cared a bit 
about her any more. And it really was not his 
fault, her illness. She had been well and happy, 
and even liked the work. The doctor had said that 
the miasma in the swamp, and her sitting by it for 
hours, making a wreath of flowers like a small girl, 
were alone responsible. And even if he was soften- 
ing the blow, she had been tired and worried before 
she came up; the housework at the cabin wouldn’t 
have been enough. She must tell Francis so. He 
did take things so hard. 

When he came, led by Peggy, neither of them 
seemed to know what to say for a little while. 
Francis sat down by her and spoke constrainedly, 
and then merely stared and stared. 

“ Well, what is it then? ” demanded Peggy, 
who was hovering about, and, unlike the Ellisons, 
seemed to have no emotions to disturb her. “ Has 
she two heads, or had you forgotten her looks en- 
tirely? ” 

‘‘I think I must have forgotten her looks en- 
tirely,” he answered slowly, never taking his eyes 
off Marjorie. “ You know— well, I hadn’t seen you. 


240 I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 
Marjorie, for some time. But you always were 
beautiful.” 

Marjorie turned pink up to the ribbon bow that 
sat out like a little girl’s at one temple. 

“ Was I? ” was all she found to say. 

Yes,” he said, and said no more. 

At this juncture Peggy rose. 

“ Well, I’m sorry not to stay here and help you 
carry on this fluent conversation,” she said, tossing 
her head. But I have an engagement elsewhere. 
If you want me ring the bell.” 

This was more or less metaphorical — ^probably a 
quotation from Thackeray — because there was no 
bell in sight. But at any rate Peggy left with one 
of her goddess-like sweeps, and was to be heard 
thereafter calling Mr. Logan with a good-will. Pres- 
ently the others, sitting silently, heard his voice 
answer gaily, and then no more. They had met and 
were off together as usual. 

You see,” said Marjorie, “ he really didn’t care 
for me. I think he and Peggy will marry each 
other one of these days, even if she is only 
sixteen.” 

She will get over being sixteen, of course,” said 


I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 241 
Francis, still in the preoccupied voice. “ I suppose 
it’s her superb vitality that attracts him. She is 
actually making him almost human.” 

Marjorie smiled faintly at that. 

You don’t like him much, do you? ” she said. 
“ Do you remember, in your letters, how you always 
called him ^ your friend with the fits? ’ ” 

“ Well, wasn’t he? ” said Francis defensively. 

“ Well, I don’t think it was fits,” she answered,, 
balancing her ideas as if they had met only to dis- 
cuss Logan; it was some sort of a nervous seizure. 
At any rate, Peggy nursed him through one of the 
attacks, so if she does marry him she knows the 
worst. But maybe they won’t be married. I re- 
member, now, he told me once that an emotion to 
be really convincing must be only touched lightly 
and foregone.” 

That man certainly talks a lot of rot,” said 
Francis. It was curious how, whenever they were 
together, they fell into intimate conversation — even 
if everything in the world had been happening the 
minute before. The thought came to Marjorie. 
“ Now, my emotions,” Francis went on, “ have cer- 
tainly been too darn convincing for comfort for the 


242 I’VE MARRIED MARJO’rIE 
last year. If I could have touched any of them 
lightly and foregone them I’d have been so proud 
you couldn’t see me for dust. But they weren’t 
that kind. . . . Marjorie, I’ve been through hell 
this last while that you’ve been sick.” 

“ I’m sorry,” she said. It gave her the opening 
she had been looking for. “ But that partly was 
what I sent for you to talk about. Not hell — I 
mean — well, our affairs. I’m well enough now to 
be quite quiet and calm about them, and I think 
you are, too. That is,” she added, half laughing, 
if you could ever be quiet and calm about any- 
thing. What I’ve seen of you has either been when 
you’ve been repressing yourself so hard that I could 
see the emotions bubble underneath, or when you’d 
stopped repressing, and were telling me what you 
really thought of me.” 

Oh, don’t! ” he said, wincing. 

“ Well, why not, Francis? You see, it’s sort of 
as if we were both dead now, and talking things 
over calmly on the golden shore. . . . Isn’t it lovely 
here! Oh, you don’t know how nice it is to be 
getting well! ” 

“ And I made you go through all that,” he said 


rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 243 
chokingly, reaching out instinctively for one of the 
thin little hands that lay contentedly outside the silk 
shawl, and then pulling back again. 

Marjorie looked at him consideringly. She 
couldn’t help thinking,, for a moment, how lovely 
this would be if it wasn’t a case of the golden shore; 
if Francis and she hadn’t messed things up so; 
if they had come up here because they loved each 
other, and trusted each other to make happiness; 
and if Francis, instead of taking his hand back 
that way, had held hers as if he had the right to. 
And she remembered suddenly their marriage night. 
He had flung himself down beside her and wrapped 
her in his arms, and she had not quite liked it; she 
had shrunk away from him. She was so weak now, 
and it felt a little lonely — if he put his arms around 
her now she thought she would like it. But then 
she was ill yet, and emotional; probably it was the 
same feeling that made men propose to their nurses 
when they were convalescing. A nurse had told her 
about it once, and added that it was considered very 
unethical to take a man up on that sort of a proposal. 
That was it — you just wanted somebody to be kind 
to you. 


244 I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 

''Perhaps if I had a cat,” said Marjorie inad- 
vertently, aloud. 

" Would you like one? ” demanded Francis. “ I'll 
get it this afternoon.” 

" Yes, I guess so,” she answered, coloring again. 

" But what made you think of a cat? ” 

" Oh, I just did,” she answered untruthfully. 

You see — you see, I'm not strong yet, and my 
mind rambled around in an inconsequent sort of 
way. It just happened on cats. But, Francis, you 
mustn't reproach yourself. I know you are feeling 
altogether too badly about what you did. But you 
mustn't. That's just the way you're made. You 
haven't nice tame emotions, and in a way you’re 
better so. Why, people like you, all energy and 
force and attraction, get so much farther in life. 
You're going to be a wonderful success, I know, 
just because you are so intense. You meant all right 
I know lots of girls who would have been awfully 
flattered at your being so jealous. They’d have 
thought it meant you were in love with them ter- 
ribly.” 

" They'd have thought right,” he said. 

She looked at him — she had been talking with 


rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 245 
her eyes on a green tree over in the distance. His 
head was bowed, and his hands clenched on his 
knees, and he had spoken again in the muttering 
voice he had begun with. 

“ I suppose you were,” she said with a little 
wistful note in her voice that neither of them knew 
was there. But never mind; I want to talk now 
about what we are both to do next. If you are 
really feeling as badly as you say about my being 
sick, I don’t suppose you mind how long I take to 
get well. I’m afraid it will be quite a little while 
longer.” 

He started to speak, but she held up one hand 
and stopped him. 

“ And after that I’ll go back to Lucille, if Billy 
isn’t home.” 

“ He is,” said Francis. He came over in one 
of the transports in July, while you were ill. That 
was the only reason I didn’t drag Lucille up here.” 

Where are they? ” demanded Marjorie a little 
blankly. But after all she should have expected 
this. 

In the fiat you and Lucille had. Lucille likes 


it.‘ 


246 rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 

“ How can she? ” sighed Marjorie. Well, she’s 
never tried this. ... I wonder what I’d better do? 
I think I heard something about a place where 
they have flats just for business women. Perhaps 
Billy could arrange for me to get one before they’re 
all gone. He always loved attending to things like 
that for people. I can’t go back to Cousin Anna. 
I’ve been through too much. Why, you mayn’t 
think it, but I’m grown up, Francis! I’m about 
twenty years older than that foolish little girl you 
married. I — I wonder I haven’t wrinkles and a little 
wisp of fuzzy gray hair ! ” she added, trying to smile. 

“Don’t!” said Francis again, looking at her 
childish face, with its showers of loose curls, that 
was trying to be so brave. He dropped his eyes 
again to the clenched hands that were tensed, one 
on either knee. “ I was foolish and young, too, 
then,” he added. “ I think I’m older, too.” 

“ Yes . . .it was a mistake,” she said in a far-off 
voice. 

“ I wish it hadn’t been,” he said. 

“Why, I was thinking that, too! ” she said. 
“ Isn’t it a pity that we weren’t as old then as we 
are now! Responsible, I mean, and wanting as 


I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 247 
much to do right things. That was one thing about 
it all. I want to do right more than anything else 
these days; and I think you do, too. And it wasn’t 
in style then — do you remember our talking it over 
up here once, when we were having a little friendly 

spat? But I suppose ” 

I suppose you would never have married me 
if you’d been so old and wise,” he said. 

She considered. 

“ But neither would you have,” she objected. 

Francis looked up at her suddenly, dashingly. 
You know better,” he burst out. You know 
I’d marry you over again if I were forty years old, 
and as wise as Solomon. The kind of love I had 
for you isn’t the kind that gets changed.” 

Marjorie lay for a minute silently. Then she 
looked at him incredulously. 

But you said ” she began very softly. 

“ I said things that I ought to be horsewhipped 
for. I loved you so much that I was jealous. I 
do think I’ve learned a little better. Why, if you 
wanted to talk to some other man now, even if I 
knew you loved him madly, if it would make you 
happier I think I’d get him for you. . . . No. 


248 rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 

No, I don’t believe I could. I want you too much 
myself. But— I’ve learned a better kind of love, 
at least, than the kind that only wants to make 
you miserable. I did get Pennington for you when 
you were so ill, and wanted him instead of me. 
Count that to me for righteousness. Marge, when 
you think about me back there in the city.” 

Then — you mean — that you love me just as 
much as ever? ” 

She lay there, wide-eyed, flushed and unbelieving. 
“ As much? A thousand times more — you know 
it. Good heavens, how could any one live in the 
house with you and not care more and more for 
you all the time? ” 

But, then, why did you ” 

“ Because I was a brute. I’ve told you that. 
And because it made me unhappier and unhappier 
to see you drifting away from me, and then, every 
time I could have done anything to draw you a 
little closer I’d lash out and send you farther away 
with my selfishness and jealousy. I didn’t know 
it was any surprise to you. It’s been the one thing 

you’ve known from the beginning ” 

She shook her head. 


249 


rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 
“Every time you lost your temper you said 
you’d stopped loving me. And that nobody could 

love the bad girl I was, to flirt and deceive you ” 

“ IVe no excuse. I haven’t even the nerve to 
ask you to try it a little longer. But believe this, 
Marjorie; the very hardest thing you could ask me 
to do ” 

She laughed a little, starry-eyed. 

“ If I asked you to go and do the cooking and 
cleaning for your beloved men, that you made me 
do? ” she asked whimsically. 

He nodded matter-of-coursely. 

“ It would mean Pennington doing my directing, 
and I don’t think he’s up to it; he’s a fine second 
in command, but he can’t plan. Yes, I’d do it in 
a minute, though it would probably mean the job 
I’m making my reputation on going smash. Do 
you want me to? If the whole thing went to the 
devil it would be a small price to pay for getting 
even another half-chance to make good with you. 
May I, Marjorie? Say I may! ” 

He was bending forward, alert and passionate, 
as if it were a chance to own the world that he was 
begging for. She told him so. 


250 rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 

“ It is — my world. I mean it, Marjorie. I don’t 
deserve it, and I don’t see how you can trust me, 
but let me do that. Or anything. I don’t care 
how hard or how ridiculous, if it would mean that 
some day I could come back to you and you’d con- 
sider — just consider — being my wife.” 

“But, Francis! But, Francis, I don’t want you 
to be ridiculous! I don’t want you to fall down ^ 
on your work. I don’t want you to do any- 
thing^ ” 

“ I know you don’t. That’s the worst of it. And 
it’s coming to me.” ! 

She was silent for a little while. ; 

“It hadn’t occurred to you, then, that perhaps j 
— perhaps living in the house with you might have ^ 
made me — well, a little fonder of you? ” ^ 

She did not know what she had expected him to 1 
do when she said that. Anything but what he did 
do — sit perfectly still and unbelieving, and look 
as if she had stabbed him. 

“No,” he said finally. “That couldn’t hap- 
pen. Don’t talk to me that way, Marjorie. 

It’s cruel. Not that you haven’t the right to 
be cruel.” 


rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 251 

It was Marjorie’s time of triumph, that she had 
planned for so long, in those days when the work 
was hard and things were lonely sometimes. But 
she did not take it. She only put out one shy hand, 
for it was a little hard for her to go on talking, she 
was getting so tired, and said timidly: 

“ But it is true, Francis. I — I am fond of you. 
And if there’s anything to forgive, I have. You 
know you can’t be so dreadfully angry with people 
when — when you like them. You — why, you don’t 
have to wait and have tests. I’ll stay with you now, 
if you want me.” 

He stared at her a little longer, still incredulous. 
Then with an inarticulate cry he was down on his 
knees beside her long chair, and he had her in his 
arms, just as he had held her the night before he 
went away, just after they were married. No, not 
just the same; for though he held her as closely 
and as tenderly, there was something of fear still 
in the way he kept his arms about her; as if he 
did not really think it was true. He knelt there 
for a long time, and neither of them moved. He 
did not call her affectionate names; he only kept 
repeating, Marjorie! Marjorie! Marjorie!” 


252 rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 

over and over again, as if her name would keep her 

close to him, and hold her real. 

She laughed a little again presently. 

It’s really so, you know, Francis.” 

“ I don’t believe it in the least! ” said Francis, 
in a more assertive voice than he had used yet. He 
laughed, too. She looked at the dark, vivid face 
so near hers, and so changed from what it had been 
five minutes before. 

“Well, you did take a lot of convincing! ” she 
said demurely. “ I felt so bold— — ” 

“ Darling,” said Francis, kissing her parentheti- 
cally, “ do you think it would be too much for you 
if you sat on my knees a little while? I can’t get 
at half enough of you where you are. And doctors 
say that being too long in one position is very bad 
for invalids.” 

“You might try,” said Marjorie docilely; 
“ though, honestly, Francis, I don’t feel any 
more like an invalid than you do. I feel per- 
fectly well and strong — let me see if I can stand 
up! ” 

He really shouldn’t — Mrs. O’Mara told him that 
severely two hours afterwards — but at that partic- 


rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 253 
ular moment he would have done anything in the 
world Marjorie requested. He lifted her to a stand- 
ing position very carefully, and held her supported 
while she tried how she felt being really on her feet 
agaic. It was the first time. Until now, Pennington 
had carried her in and out, while Francis felt a 
deadly envy in his heart. 

“ See, I’m all well! ” she said triumphantly, look- 
ing exactly, as he told her, like a doll, with her 
lacy draperies and her shoulder-length curls, and 
her slim arms thrown out to balance herself. He 
let her stand there a minute or so, and then pulled 
her gently over and held her for a while. 

At least, they thought it was a while. It was 
much more like two hours; there was so much to 
talk over, and explain, and arrange for generally. 
They decided to stay just where they were, for a 
little while at least, after Francis’s work was done. 
Marjorie was to get strong as quicWy as possible, 
and they were both, after their long practice at 
being unhappy, to try to be as happy as possible. 
And the very first time that Francis was jealous, 
qr objected to any one kissing her hand or traveling 
from New York to take her away from a cruel hus- 


254 I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 

band, Marjorie was to leave him forever. This was 

his suggestion. 

“ But I don’t think I would,” said Marjorie 
thoughtfully, lifting her head a little from his shoul- 
der. “ I never did, did I, no matter what you did 
to me? You couldn’t even make me go when you 
sent me — I preferred malarial fever.” 

Francis said nothing to that, except to suddenly 
tighten his arms about her. He was not yet at the 
point where he could make a joke of her illness. 
She had been too near the Valley of the Shadow for 
that. 

So they were still sitting very comfortably to- 
gether, discussing their mutual life — they had 
planned as far as the tenth year of their marriage — 
when Peggy descended upon them again. 

Marjorie flushed and made a faint effort to es- 
cape, but Francis sat immovably, exactly as if 
Peggy were not there at all. 

“Oh! ” said Peggy. 

“We’ve made up,” said Francis coolly. 

“Then I suppose you won’t be wanting me on 
the premises,” said Peggy, making a dive for the 
door. 


255 


I’VE MARRIED MARJORIE 

“ I would be delighted if there was a whole pro- 
cession of you, like a frieze,” said Francis, “ walk- 
ing by and seeing how happy I am.” 

“ Oh, but I wouldn’t! ” protested Marjorie. “ Do 
let me get up and be respectable, Francis. There 
will be a procession going by presently — you know 
the men all come and ask how I am every day.” 

At that reluctantly he did put her back in her 
chair, where she lay for a little longer, starry-eyed 
and quite unlike an invalid. Peggy went inside, 
judging that in spite of Francis’s protests they 
would be perfectly happy alone; and, besides, she 
wanted to tell her mother. The two on the veranda 
stayed where they were. 

“ But what about the cooking? ” demanded Mar- 
jorie presently. 

“ It’s been all right while you were sick. We 
are going to get through sooner than I thought.” 

Oh, I’m so glad,” she sighed. “ I really did 
wanfyou to get the work done, and succeed — I never 
hated you that much, at the worst.” 

‘‘Don’t talk about the work! ” he said passion- 
ately. “The work didn’t matter a bit. And 
I tell you this, Marjorie, if I can help it you shall 


256 rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 

never do another stroke of work as long as you 

live! ” 

“ That^s going too far, as usual,” said Marjorie 
calmly. “ You certainly are a tempestuous person, 
Francis Ellison! I’d be unhappy without some- 
thing to do. . . . May I play on the banjo some- 
times in the evening, and will you stay quite close 
to me when I do? ” 

“ You mean ” he asked. 

“ I mean that you didn’t destroy all those notes 
when you lost your temper with me. To begin with, 
you left note-shaped places in the dust, on all the 
things you had put there for me — you really will 
have to let me do a little dusting occasionally, dear! 
— and so I hunted. One note was under the fresh 
banjo strings. . . . And you may well be glad you 
forgot it.” 

Why, dearest? Did it make you a little sorry 
for me? ” 

‘‘Oh, so sorry! In spite of all you’d said and 
done, somehow — somehow when I read that I think 
I began to fall in love with you all over again. . . . 
I cried, I know. I didn’t know then that Was what 
was the matter with me, but I know now it was. 


rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 257 
You had wanted me so much, there in our dear little 
cabin; and try as I would to keep telling myself that 
it was a last yearns you, it kept feeling like a this 
year’s.” 

It was,” he said fervently. “ It was this year’s, 
and every year’s, as long as we both live.” 

As long as we both live,” echoed Marjorie. 

They were both quiet for a while. The sun was 
setting, and the rays shone down through the trees; 
through a gap they could see the west,* scarlet and 
gold and beautiful. Things felt very solemn. 
Marjorie put out one hand mutely, and Francis topk 
it and held it closely. It was more really their mar- 
riage day than the one in New York, when they 
were both young and reckless, and scarcely more 
than bits of flotsam in the tremendous world-current 
that set toward mating and replacement. They be- 
longed together now, willingly and deliberately; set 
to go forward with what love and forbearance and 
earnestness of purpose they could, all the days of 
their life. They both felt it, and were still. 

But presently Marjorie’s laughter awakened Fran- 
cis from his muse. He had been promising himself 
that he would make up to her— that he would try 




258 rVE MARRIED MARJORIE 
to erase all his wild doings from her mind. She 
should forget some day that he had ever put her 
in an automobile, and borne her away, Sabine 
fashion, to where he could dominate her into sub- 
mission and wifehood. He had gone very far into 
himself, and that light laugh of hers, that he loved, 
drew him back from the far places. 

What is it, dear? ” he asked. 

I was just thinking — I was just thinking what 
awfully good common sense you showed, carrying 
me off that way. And how proud of it I’ll be as 
long as I live! ” said Marjorie. 


THE END 



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